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fo CHE INSPIRATION OF OUR os 
a FAITH 


a SS 


THE INSPIRATION 
OF OUR FAITH 
SERMONS 


By 
JOHN WATSON, D.D. 


“TAN MACLAREN”’ 


Author of ‘*The Mind of the Master,’’ ‘‘ Beside the Bonnie 
Brier Bush,” etc. 


NEW YORK 


A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 


3 and 5 West Eighteenth Street 
Near Fifth Avenue 


sy 


oie 3 Copyright, 1905 
By A. C. ARMSTRONG AND § 


Re E Published, November, 1905 
: 
; ; : 
, : 
' 
t 


Bor (Div. S ; 


To 
* 
James Oswald Dykes 
witb as 
Respect and Gratitude Poh Gite 


Vil 


CONTENTS 


THe INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH . 


ENTHUSIASM 


OPTIMISM 


Jesus’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION 


VISION 


CONVERSION 


THe PASSION OF GOD . 


Jesus’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY 


CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 


WoRLDLINESS A FRAME OF MIND . 
9 


PAGE 


13 


26 


39 


5° 


61 


72 


85 


98 


108 


I22 


Io 


XI 


XII 


XIII 


XIV 


XV 


XVI 


XVII 


XVIII 


CONTENTS 


PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE THE CONDITION 


OF SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE . 


FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION, THE 


METHOD oF JESUS 
CHARACTER THE SPRING OF LIFE . 
CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 
THE IMMANENCE OF GOD . 


REASONABLENESS THE TOUCHSTONE OF 


TRUTH . 
CONTEMPORARY FAITH . 
POSITIVE RELIGION , -< « 2 enee 
THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 
THE DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE . 


IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 


PAGE 


133 


147 
157 


167 


179 


190 
203 
214 
227 
239 


249 


XXII 


XXIII 


XXIV 


CONTENTS 


THe GLORY OF THE CITY . 


Tue Bopity PRESENCE OF CHRIST 


THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD . 


DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 


THE Duty oF ENCOURAGEMENT . 


THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 


THINGS WHICH REMAIN , , 


THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 


310 


324 


335 


348 


y f A wet 
+ 
. 


‘ig. 


I 
THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 


“Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spike- 
nard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, 
and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house 
was filled with the odour of the ointment.”—.S?#. 
John xii. 3. 

= religion and poetry breathe a common air, 

and rule over a common kingdom. They 
have to do with visions which love alone can realize, 
with questions to which reason has no answer, 


with feelings which elude expression in words. 
Fancies that broke through language and escaped. 


The Saint and the Poet are both born from 
above, and by their inner sight they behold two 
worlds. They have their being in the perfect 
ideal of this visible life. Unto them belong “the 
original gift of spreading the atmosphere of the 
ideal world around forms, incidents, and situa- 
tions, of which for the common view custom had 
bedimmed all the lustre, and dried up the sparkle 
and the dewdrops.” Religion robbed of emotion 


is a system of philosophy, or a code of morals, 
13 


14 THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 


without imagination or inspiration. It may be 
potent within a provincial sphere, it can never be 
universal and omnipotent. The angels do not 
sing over its coming; their legions are not ready 
for its aid. 

No religion has ever been touched with so beau- 
tiful an emotion as Christianity. Its sacred book 
opens with a garden where the soul of man walks 
with God in the shadow of the trees before it goes 
out on a long wander year, and closes with another 
garden whither the soul returns after its bitter 
travail, white and victorious. A world, foul with 
sin, is hidden beneath the deluge, on whose black 
waste of waters floats the Ark of God with a rem- 
nant of the race, and the angel of death smites the 
firstborn of the oppressor, that the oppressed may 
go free. The waters of the sea stand in crystal 
banks to allow the people of God to escape; the 
newborn nation is fed with manna from Heaven, 
and water from the flinty rock; and they come at 
last into a land flowing with milk and honey. 
The earth is full of voices and revelations to spir- 
itual souls, and the visible world becomes the 
parable of God. The Eternal will yet set up His 
kingdom among men, and the sufferings of the 


THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 15 


race are to end in an age of gold, when there will 
be nothing to destroy in all God’s holy mountain, 
and a little child will lead men captive. The Old 
Testament moves forward with a rhythmic step to 
the coming of the Messiah. 

It was fitting that Jesu’s own life should be 
heralded with singing, the song of angels, the 
Magnificat, and the Hymn of Simeon, for from 
beginning to end it was an idyll. If the mighty 
archangel who stands in the presence of God 
announced His coming, the young child was born 
among beasts of burden, and cradled in a manger. 
At twelve years old He amazed the doctors in the 
Temple by His questions, at thirty years He is 
tempted of the Devil in the wilderness. He comes 
from the waters of the Jordan, where He has taken 
up the burden of His life, to change the water into 
wine at a marriage feast. Unto appearance He is 
the poorest of men; without a home of His own, 
eating the plainest food, living with the lowliest 
people. Yet men fell back from before His face, 
death yields up its prey at a word, the sick gather 
for healing to His feet, the very winds and waves 
obey Him. What devotion of the people to Him, 
what dark conspiracy of enemies against Him, 


16 THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 


what picturesque interviews with inquiring souls, 
what lonely hours on the mountain side! What 
a tragedy of suffering, what a triumph of good- 
ness! Without the learning of the schools He 
confounded the Rabbis, with the simplest of images 
He taught the deepest truths. Along the paths of 
the country, on the grass of the mountain side, 
from fishing boats, in village synagogues, in the 
High Priest’s palace, and in the Temple of great 
Jerusalem He delivered His soul. 


Across the sea, along the shore, 

In numbers more and ever more, 

From lonely hut and busy town 

The valley through the mountain down. 
What was it ye went out to see, 

Ye silly folk of Galilee? 

The reed that in the wind doth shake, 
The weed that washes in the lake, 

The reeds that wave, the weeds that float, 
A young man preaching in a boat. 


The same emotion touches that society which 
Jesus created, and which we call sometimes the 
Church and sometimes the Kingdom of God. 
Every member is a son of God, and a brother with 
all his fellow Christians: he is a servant in the 
work of God, and a soldier in God’s battle. Im- 
perfect to sight he is a saint in idea, and though 


THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 17 


he be as poor as Christ on earth, yet he is an heir 
of God. To him belong great treasures, where 
the thief cannot steal, and his future dwelling is 
our Father’s House. Dying, he sees the heavens 
open, and Jesus at God’s right hand, or living he 
beholds the new Jerusalem come down from 
Heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. 
Tortured in the Roman arena, or burning at the 
stake, he sings hymns of triumph, counting it all 
joy to suffer for Christ. From time to time this 
emotion bursts forth like a new spring and makes 
green the wilderness of the Church. St. Francis 
forms his order of poverty, and St. Bernard sings 
hymns of praise to Jesus. Xavier in his mission- 
ary zeal stretches out his hands to the far East 
and cries, ‘‘ More sufferings, Lord, more sufferings.” 
The Moravians surrender their goods, and go forth 
to conquer the Arctic regions for Christ. Father 
Damien dies with his lepers, and Livingstone falls 
on sleep upon his knees in Africa. The women of 
the Salvation Army nurse the outcasts of society, 
and crowds of people are moved by an evangelist 
as when the wind sweeps over ripe corn. Chris- 
tianity takes for its symbol the Cross on which its 


Founder died, and by the victory of humility 
TOE 2 


18 THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 


Christianity has conquered. Our faith has only 
two rites—in one the baptized buries the past and 
begins life as a new creature; in the other com- 
municants are united in one fellowship of suffer- 
ing with Christ and His disciples, and pass from 
hand to hand 

The Holy Cup 

With all its wreathen stem of passion flowers 

And quivering sparkles of the ruby stars. 

What do you call this? Fact, doctrine, con- 
duct? Surely, but something else and something 
more. It is poetry, the most revealing and the 
most inspiring which our ears have heard. Chris- 
tianity is not founded on logic but on passion. 
We are not moved by argument but by devotion. 
Christianity is a sublime emotion. When that 
ceases for a time our religion dies down to the 
roots, as in winter time: when there comes a bap- 
tism of new feeling Christianity bursts into spring. 
It was the great achievement of Schleiermacher, 
to distinguish religion from knowledge, declaring 
that “quantity of knowledge is not quantity of 
piety,” and also to distinguish religion from mor- 
ality, for “while morality always shows itself as 
manipulated, piety appears as a surrender.” 


THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 19 


When your material is human life you can do 
nothing of the first order unless you call emotion 
into play. While a law stands it must be obeyed, 
but if it be unjust you make your appeal from 
law to righteousness, for law is only a code, right- 
eousness is a passion. We make provision for the 
poor and they receive bread according to rules, 
but let some sudden tragedy overwhelm our fellow 
men, then we appeal to pity. We are not assessed 
by tax gatherers, we assess ourselves by love. 
Relief is a regulation, pity is a passion. When 
the national affairs move with regular ebb and 
flow, politics are sufficient. When the common- 
wealth is among the breakers we cast ourselves 
on patriotism. Politics are but a system, patriotism 
is a passion. If a province of the Empire be 
orderly we ask ability of its ruler; if a province 
be discontented we demand sympathy. You can 
manage without emotion, you cannot change; you 
can carry on, you cannot create. 

Is it not emotion which dignifies human life? 
Without its play friendship would be only acquaint- 
ance, marriage would be a social partnership, par- 
ents would be legal guardians and the home would 
be an hotel. Without emotion human society is 


20 THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 


a joint-stock company, with it society is the family 
of God. Every movement which has stirred the 
depths of life, and changed the face of history, has 
sprung from some profound sentiment. Love for 
Jesus established Christianity on the ruins of the 
Roman empire, and saved civilization from anar- 
chy. The same passion swept over Europe like a 
tidal wave, sending forth the chivalry of Christen- 
dom to redeem the holy sepulchre from the Moslem. 
It was a mingled passion of indignation and pity, 
kindled by the earnestness of Wilberforce, and fed 
in later years by Mrs. Stowe’s novels and Whit- 
tier’s poetry which struck the shackles off the slave. 
We ourselves have seen the geography of Eastern 
Europe recast, Germany united, Italy redeemed, 
Greece delivered from the Turks by the spirit of 
nationality. And we have seen the heart of our 
own people wake at last to the suffering of the 
poor, and a newborn sympathy do more in ten 
years than could have been done in fifty by law. 
Rely upon reason and conscience alone, and refuse 
the aid of emotion, and you could not have social 
reform, the emancipation of the slave, national 
freedom, or Christianity itself. 

Is it not disappointing that the chief charm of 


THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 21 


our religion has been often filched away from us, 
sometimes by dogmatic theologians, sometimes by 
unliterary critics? The idyll of the Garden of 
Eden has been reduced to a legal negotiation with 
parties and parchment, with seals and conditions. 
The inspired visions of prophets have been precipi- 
tated into theological science. The exquisite say- 
ings of Jesus are tortured into the shape of dogmas. 
And _ squalid ecclesiastical controversies between 
Catholics and Protestants are thrust into the mag- 
nificence of the Apocalypse. What avails that 
wealth of spiritual beauty which has created modern 
literature, architecture, painting, and music, if those 
who love it place their Scriptures on the level of the 
six books of Euclid? 

Another school less theological and more critical 
spend their strength in analysing the documents. 
They reject the miraculous and minimize the 
romantic till Christ be only another Rabbi, and 
nothing remains of His teaching but a few frag- 
ments. Christianity for this kind of man is only 
another parchment. The wild-flowers that one 
saw yesterday wet with dew are to-day dried and 
ticketed in a herbarium. No doubt the two schools 
proceed on different principles and have different 


ae a 


} 


— 


S 


22 THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 


ends in view, but they both accomplish the same 
result. They reduce poetry to prose, and in the 
process Christianity ceases to convey half her truth, 
and loses all her fascination. For now our faith 
hardens into a scholastic creed or shrivels into a 
few severely edited fragments of literature. The 
picture is so many feet of canvas; the angel is a 
piece of marble, the regimental flag a yard of cloth. 
It is not by such things the soul is stirred or life 
is changed. The spikenard has been sold for 
three hundred pence, and there is no fragrance in 
the house. 

Some persons, however, are haunted with a 
suspicion that in so far as you exalt the emotions 
of Christianity you undermine its reality. They 
prefer the ten words of Moses as recorded in the © 
Pentateuch to their interpretation in the Sermon 
on the Mount and are more at home among the 
Proverbs of Solomon than with the parables of 
Jesus. Both the rhetoric of the prophets and the 
imagery of Jesus have been a perplexity to them, 
and they are never content till the clusters of grapes 
have been stripped from the branches and the 
richness thereof bottled in creeds. They are afraid 
that when one passes from prose into poetry he is 


THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 23 


leaping from the solid reck into the air. They do 
not understand that emotion can bring us into 
regions of truth which reason cannot reach, and 
that a parable of Jesus may be quite as much in 
touch with fact and therefore quite as true as an 
article in a confession. Instead of poetry being 
less charged with truth than prose it is the other 
way, for poetry comes in where prose has given 
up the struggle. If truth be perfectly common- 
place then it may be stated in the most prosaic 
style, but there are truths, especially in religion, 
which defy ordinary means of expression, because 
they are so subtle and spiritual. What cannot be 
achieved by speech may be attained by painting 
or music, wherein the thoughts of which we have 
been hardly conscious are expressed for us and 
embodied. And this has been done for religion 
in the emotion of our faith. The Te Deum is not 
_less but more true than the Athanasian Creed, the 
“Tn Memoriam” of Tennyson than Butler’s Anal- 
ogy, George Herbert’s Poems than the Confession - 
of Faith. For any one to suppose that in religion 
emotion is an unsafe guide is to believe that a land 
surveyor’s plan of Heaven would give us a truer 
idea than the revelation of St. John. When we 


24 THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 


move through the prophecies of Isaiah or the con- 
versations of Jesus, we are not being taught by 
catechism, but we are living in an atmosphere 
which passes through the pores of the soul. 

Other people are apt to suspect that emotion is 
an alternative to action, but emotion rightly di- 
rected is the highest motive power. What can 
never be accomplished by the most convincing 
argument or the keenest sense of duty can be 
wrought by the impulse of love. A mother will 
make sacrifices which no one can ask of a nurse; 
the best drilled conscript will never touch the hero- 
ism of a patriot fighting for his home; the true 
artist who serves art as Jacob for Rachel will 
expend labour on his work you could never obtain 
from a hireling. The action which is charged with 
emotion has an engaging beauty, and to emo- 
tion must be credited the great successes of life. 
Without the teaching of Fichte Germany had not 
girded her loins afresh to face the first Napoleon; 
had Mazzini never wrote, Garibaldi had never 
delivered Italy. Beecher from his pulpit did as 
much as Lincoln with his armies to free the slaves. 
First there is the emotion which sets men’s hearts 
on fire, and then there is the deed. Christianity 


THE INSPIRATION OF OUR FAITH 25 


obtained her martyrs, and won her victories, not 
because men reasoned that Christ was the Son of 
God, or concluded that His law was the most per- 
fect righteousness, but because multitudes of ordi- 
nary people loved Him with all their heart and were 
prepared to die for Him. When women like Mary 
gave the best that they possessed to Christ in the 
hour of His defeat, and before He was crucified 
poured over Him the spikenard of their love, the 
future of Christianity was assured, and Christ al- 
ready had ascended His Throne. 


Teche 
ENTHUSIASM 
“They said: ‘ He is beside Himself.’”—S¢. Mark iii. 21. 


ANY years ago some of us were much im- 
pressed by a little work entitled Modern 
Christianity a Civilized Heathenism, and it -still 
lies upon one minister’s shelfi—to be taken as a 
tonic when one’s religious constitution is relaxed. 
It is an extreme book, but the anonymous author 
fairly makes his chief point when he insists that 
the difference between Christ and Christians is 
that the Master was always in deadly earnest, and 
that we are generally tepid; and when he points 
out that Christianity does not suffer to-day at the 
hands of the world because it is so soft and in- 
offensive, but that if it followed in the steps of 
Jesus Christianity would again be cast out from 
society. His most bitter passage is a comparison 
between two clergymen, one who is concerned with 
the innocent pleasures of life, and has a tender 


regard for his dinner, and another who has surren- 
26 


ENTHUSIASM 27 


dered everything for Christ and dies of fever caught 
in the discharge of duty. ‘‘Mad,” says the au- 
thor, coming to his climax, ‘“‘simply means different 
from other people; and if Jesus lived in our days, 
Christians would be so astonished at His conduct 
that they would put Him in an asylum.” 

This point has been made by two other free 
lances of our time, by Laurence Oliphant in his 
Piccadiliy, and by Mrs. Lynn Linton in her Joshua 
Davidson. It is indeed a point which comes very 
handy to the candid critics of the Christian Church, 
and which in certain moods must give every sin- 
cere Christian cause for uneasy thought. 

Our text reminds us that the situation actually 
occurred in Jesu’s life, and was not the least pain- 
ful in His experience. He was inured to insult 
and abuse, but there are strokes which pierce the 
heart. When Jesu’s own mother and brethren 
came at the moment of high popularity, and ex- 
plained that He was not in His senses, it was a 
stroke of Satanic cruelty: And what lent bitter- 
ness to the incident was this—they did not object 
to His work, but to the spirit in which He did it. 
They would have wished Him to do God’s will 
cautiously—being careful about His meat and 


28 ENTHUSIASM 


drink; they were dismayed because He did God’s 
will intently, forgetting Himself altogether. Jesus 
was counted mad simply because He was enthusi- 
astic, and the incident is therefore typical. Our 
Master illustrates that passion for religion which is 
prepared to sacrifice everything, even life itself, in 
the service of God, and His family represents for 
the time, the worldly mind which regarded Him 
with angry suspicion and has been pouring cold 
water on enthusiasm ever since. Two states of 
mind are contrasted—one inspired and self-forget- 
ful, the other prosaic and self-regarding. And they 
will always be in collision. 

One does not mean in saying this that passion 
has been an inseparable feature of Christian char- 
acter or that the thermometer has always stood 
at blood heat in the Christian Church. It were 
not difficult to find congregations so self-controlled 
that they are little better than an aquarium of cold- 
blooded animals, and individuals who are in no 
more danger of excitement than a marble statue. 
In the eighteenth century they used to praise a 
person on his tombstone because he exhibited 
religion without enthusiasm, and even later it was 
necessary to write books in defence of enthusiasm. 


ENTHUSIASM 29 


Thousands of Christian folk of our own time regard 
religious emotions with grave distrust, and are ever 
making a plea for decorous piety. Whatever may 
be said of their correct and well bred ideals, it is 
worth remembering that upon their conditions the 
kingdom of God would never have existed and 
that if enthusiasm died out the obituary of the 
Christian Church should be prepared without de- 
lay. From time to time a tide of emotion has 
swept through the Church, cleansing her life from 
the pollution of the world and lifting it to a higher 
spiritual level, as when the ocean fills the bed of a 
shrunken river with its wholesome buoyant water. 
Every such springtime has been a lift to religion, 
and has been condemned as madness by the world. 
It was a tolerant world before which St. Paul stood 
when he was tried by Festus, one that could appre- 
ciate manliness and honesty. Festus indeed was 
full of respect for Paul, but the moment the apostle 
introduced his religion the Roman spoke with an- 
other voice. It was not so much that Christianity 
was dangerous as that it was unintelligible. It 
belonged to another order of things, and St. Paul 
was beyond his ken. ‘‘Much learning doth make 
thee mad,” said the Roman magistrate. Centuries 


30 ENTHUSIASM 


passed and there came a day when the forgiveness 
of sins was sold for money, and the morals of the 
clergy were an open scandal. Luther arose and 
pled for the cleansing of the Temple, and the 
Festus of the time was not angry with his Paul. 
“Brother Luther,” said the Pope, “has a fine 
genius;” by which he meant that Luther was 
crazy, and they also said in Rome that if Christian- 
ity were a fable it was at least a profitable one. 
One sees the perpetual contrast in Luther and in 
Pope Leo X—the passion of faith and the compo- 
sure of culture. The spirit of God stirred amid 
the dry bones of England in the eighteenth century 
when great ladies offered themselves to the ser- 
vice of Jesus, and the faces of colliers were washed 
white by the tears of penitence. And we know 
what the respectable and religious world said: 


” “a9 windmill 


“low follies,” “‘a man out of Bedlam, 
in their heads,” ‘‘fools,’ and “fanatics.” One 
does not count such words as evidence against 
Wesley and Whitefield; he immediately concludes 
that spring has succeeded winter, and that the 
Church has been afresh endued with power. 

But we must not run away with the idea that in 


criticizing enthusiasm the world is deliberately 


ENTHUSIASM 31 


criticizing Christianity. The historical attitude of 
the world to religion is one of large toleration, and 
somewhat less sympathy. Religion is an instinct 
and must be fulfilled just as a man must eat and 
drink. Let every man therefore get a religion 
which will suit him, and let him hold his tongue. 
It is after all an irksome necessity, and if you are 
fortunate enough to find any kind of god with 
whom you can live on good terms, be thankful, 
but do not trouble your neighbor with your private 
affairs. “A Catholic are you? Very good. A 
Protestant? Quite so. Recently I have become a 
Theosophist. Really!” The world yawns, for it 
is not interested in your religious fancies. You are 
at liberty to be anything you like provided you are 
not troublesome. One may also admit that the 
world has a kindly feeling to organized Christianity. 
It likes an aesthetic Church, and has no objection 
to a Christian minister if he be a cultured man. 
It will say the Apostles” Creed on occasion provided 
you do not attach any definite meaning to a number 
of the clauses, and considers the Burial Service the 
most decent way of closing a man’s career. A con- 
ventional Christian will have no difficulty in coming 
to terms with the world; his difficulty will begin 


32 ENTHUSIASM 


when he meets the eye of Christ. But suppose one 
is so possessed with the spirit of Jesus that he in- 
sists on carrying Christianity through his thinking, 
his business, his home life, his politics, you have 
another state of affairs. His friends may not say 
that he is insane, and they will not willingly perse- 
cute him, but they will lift their eyebrows and 
remark that this kind of thing is imprudent for a 
man with a wife and six children. They may even 
feel it their duty to take him aside some day and 
speak to him as one who is overstrained. Had St. 
Paul contented himself with a theological discussion 
about Jesus in rabbinical circles, he would have 
been left in peace, and we might never have heard 
his name. But when he counted all things but loss 
for Jesus Christ, then even the tolerant Roman 
Government was obliged to suppress him. Had 
Luther written respectful notes to his Holiness 
hoping that he would consider the state of the 
Church in his leisure moments he would have got a 
letter from a secretary saying that his Holiness was 
obliged for his communication. When he nailed 
his challenge to the church doors of Wittemberg 
there remained nothing now but war to the death. 
One may regret that the peace of society should be 


ENTHUSIASM 33 


broken by religion, but the Kingdom of God stands 
in enthusiasm, and in the last issue it is justified in 
all her children. 

There are two convincing pleas for enthusiasm 
and the first is its reasonableness. A man may be 
keen about many interests, but of all things he ought 
to be keenest about religion. We are indulgent to 
enthusiasm in many departments, from football to 
collecting matchboxes, and are willing to give to 
every innocent fad a good-natured benediction. 
Why should this polite tolerance for every man’s 
hobby harden into persecution when his mania is 
the Kingdom of God? Why should a gladiator be 
sane and St. Paul be mad? Ah, the reason is not 
obscure. What is eccentricity but motion from a 
different centre? There is the centre of things 
unseen and eternal, and the centre of the things 
seen and temporal, and the lives pivoted on those 
two points cannot be harmonized. Suppose thirty 
years ago that a scientist had told a rustic that we 
should soon be able to speak to people in Paris 
through a wire, the rustic would have left his com- 
pany with celerity, and kept his children off the road 
for that day. But the scientist was only a few 


years ahead of the people, and the boldest Christian 
LF. - 3 


34 ENTHUSIASM 


dreamer is only anticipating the good time which 
is coming. Place a dozen cold-blooded and hard- 
headed men in a meeting of the Salvation Army 
when the Army is on fire, and they will think of 
Bedlam. Take half a dozen Salvation soldiers to 
the Bourse of Paris when there is a crisis in Euro- 
pean affairs, and the Salvation men will be aghast. 
Madness must be defined by the standard of sanity. 
If any one believes that the Kingdom of God will 
remain when this world has disappeared like a 
shadow, then he is right to fling away all that he 
possesses, and himself too, for its advancement and 
victory. 

My second plea for enthusiasm is its success. 
Take if you please the enthusiast who has not 
always been perfectly wise, and whose plans any 
one can criticize; the man who has not had tangi- 
ble success. It does not follow that the cause of 
God is condemned in him or has lost by him. 
There is something more important than results 
which can be tabulated in reports; there is the 
spirit which inspires action and without which 
there will be no report to write. Unless enthusiasm 
is stored on the high water-shed there will be no 
stream to drive the mills in the valley below. “It 


ENTHUSIASM 35 


is magnificent,” said a French officer when the six 
hundred charged at Balaclava, “but it is not war.” 
Certainly it was magnificent, and perhaps it was 
war. Those heroes will never be forgotten in 
English literature or in the annals of the English 
race. They fell at our Thermopylae, and as long 
as the English flag flies the charge of the Light 
Brigade will quicken our pulses. Gordon’s death 
was a calamity, but it was not waste. Without his 
self-forgetful devotion we should have lost one of 
the most inspiring examples for our officers, and 
for the young men of our congregation; we should 
not have Gordon institutions throughout the land, 
and a heartening message for our lads. When a 
knight dies in his steel armour it doesnot matter 
much in the long result whether he lost or won. 
Every one who saw him fall, fearless to the last, 
leaves the lists with a higher idea of manhood. 

We are hag-ridden in the Church of God by the 
idea of machinery, and we forget that the motive 
power of religion is inspiration. Boards are an 
excellent device for management, they are helpless 
for creation. No resolution of any court, however 
cleverly drawn up, can produce a prophet or a 
martyr. He comes from God and does his work 


36 ENTHUSIASM 


in his own way; he is severely criticized by all 
kinds of futile people, and then he returns to give 
in his account to God. Was it failure when the 
men of the Church Missionary Society died at 
Uganda, and the men of the Baptist Mission fell 
one after another on the Congo? It was high fail- 
ure, that kind which turns the world upside down. 
You can always get prudent people; they are at a 
discount in their multitude. ‘‘The world,” some 
one has said, “‘is filled with the proverbs of a base 
prudence which adores the rule of three, which 
never subscribes, which never gives, which seldom 
lends, and only asks one question—Will it bake 
bread?’? What we have to search for high and 
low is imprudent people, self-forgetful, uncalculat- 
ing, heroic people. ‘‘Give me,”’ says another, ‘“‘one 
hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and 
desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw 
whether they be clergymen or laymen; such men 
will shake the gates of hell and set up the Kingdom 
of God upon earth.” Were the infection of en- 
thusiasm to spread over the Kirk we should see the 
Kingdom of God coming with leaps and bounds. 
Has God baptized any of my readers into this 
spirit? Be thankful that in an age of indifference, 


ENTHUSIASM 37 


when enthusiasm has departed from literature and 
politics, the good fire is burning in your hearts. 
Do not give any heed to the criticism of cool or 
clever people. You have other spectators than this 
present world; a cloud of witnesses is bending over 
you and bidding you be of good cheer. If the 
world does not understand you they understand, 
for in their day they have suffered and conquered. 
If you do not hear their voices on account of the 
rabble’s laughter, you will hear them in eternity’s 
stillness, and if, carried away for the moment by 
the strength of the hostile tide, you fling up an 
empty hand to Heaven, it will be caught in the 
hand of Christ. 

Has God denied you this gift of enthusiasm? 
Then do not hinder the enthusiast by your side; 
do not chill him with a spray of cheap common- 
sense, or discourage him by your friendly disap- 
proval. If there be not in you the heart to plunge 
into the river and save the drowning man, then for 
Heaven’s sake and your own sake do not stand 
on the bank and criticize the style of the swimmer 
who with labouring stroke is bringing his uncon- 
scious burden to the shore. Surely that is the 
meanest thing that any one from his coign of safety 


38 ENTHUSIASM 


can do. Can you not find somewhere in you a 
cheer for the gallant struggler? Will you not 
stretch out your hand to help him as he nears the 
bank? And will you not pray that God may 
touch your soul also with that fire which burned as 
a pure flame in the heart of Jesus, and has never 
quite died out from the heart of the Church? 

Mastered by this madness Christ laid down His 
life for our salvation; by this madness the world 
is being redeemed. 


III 
OPTIMISM 


“Go ye therefore and make Christians of all 
nations.”— St. Matthew xviii. 19. 

PONG the characteristics of Jesu’s teaching 

which have passed into the higher con- 
sciousness of Christianity is an inextinguishable 
optimism. When He was only a village prophet, 
Jesus declared that the social Utopia of Isaiah 
was already being fulfilled, and when He gave the 
Sermon on the Mount He spoke as a greater Moses, 
legislating not for a nation but for a race. If He 
called apostles they were to disciple every creature, 
and if He died it was for a world. His generation 
might condemn Him, but they would see Him 
again on the clouds of Heaven. His death would 
be celebrated in a sacrament unto every genera- 
tion, and being lifted on a cross He would draw 
all men to Him. The apostles who failed in His 
lifetime would afterwards do greater works than 
Himself, and He Who departed from their sight 


would return in the Holy Ghost and be with them 
39 


40 OPTIMISM 


for ever. He looks beyond His own land, and 
embraces a race in His plans. He ignores the 
defeats of His own ministry, and discounts the 
victory of His disciples. He teaches, commands, 
arranges, prophesies, with a universal and eternal 
accent. This was not because He made light of 
His task or of His enemies; no one ever had such 
a sense of the hideous tyranny of sin or passed 
through such a Gehenna, but Jesus believed with 
all His heart and mind in the Kingdom of God, 
that it was coming and must come. He held that 
the age of gold was not behind, but before hu- 
manity. 

This high spirit has passed into the soul of 
Christ’s chief servants. The directors and pion- 
eers, the martyrs and exemplars of our faith have 
had no misgivings; the light of hope has ever been 
shining on their faces. St. Paul boasted that he 
was a freeborn Roman, but he was prouder to be 
a member of Christ’s commonwealth, whose capital 
was in Heaven, and in which all nations were one. 
He was a loyal subject of Caesar, but he owned a 
more magnificent emperor at God’s right hand. 
Above the forces of this present world he saw the 
principalities and powers in the heavenly places 


OPTIMISM 41 


fighting for his faith. Scourged and imprisoned he 
burst into psalms, and he looked beyond his mar- 
tyrdom to the crown of righteousness. Shackled 
to a soldier he wrote letters brimming over with 
joy, and confined to a barrack room he caught 
through a narrow window the gleam of the eternal 
city. Never did he flinch before a hostile world, 
never was he brow-beaten by numbers, never was 
he discouraged by failure or reverse. He knew 
that he was on the winning side, and that he was 
laying the foundation of an everlasting state. You 
catch the same grand note in St. Augustine with all 
his horror of prevailing iniquity; in the medieval 
hymn writers celebrating Jerusalem the Golden, 
when clouds of judgment hung over their heads; 
and in the missionaries of the faith who toiled their 
life through without a convert, and yet died in 
faith. They might be losing but their Command- 
er was winning. The Cross might be surrounded 
with the smoke of battle, it was being carried for- 
ward to victory. 

They were right in this conviction, but do not 
let us make any mistake about the nature of this 
triumph, else we shall be caught by delusions, and 
in the end be much discouraged. It will not be 


42 OPTIMISM 


ecclesiastical, and by that one means that no sin- 
gle Church, either the Church of Rome, or the 
Church of England, or the Church of Scotland will 
ever embrace the whole human race, or even its 
English-speaking province. One cannot study 
Church History since the Reformation, or examine 
the condition of the various religious denominations 
to-day without being convinced that there will 
always be diversity of organization, and any per- 
son who imagines the Church of the East making 
her humble submission to Rome, or the various . 
Protestant bodies of the Anglo-Saxon race trooping 
in their multitude to surrender their orders to the 
Anglican Church has really lost touch with the 
possibilities of life. Nor will the triumph be theo- 
logical in the sense that all men will come to hold 
the same dogma whether it be that of Rome or 
Geneva. There will always be many schools of 
thought within the Kingdom of God just as there 
will be many nations. Neither one Church nor 
one creed will swallow up the others and dominate 


the world. He who cherishes that idea is the vic- ° 


tim of an optimism which is unreasonable and 
undesirable. The Kingdom of God will come not 
through organization but through inspiration, Its 


OPTIMISM 43 


sign will not be the domination of a Church, but 
the regeneration of humanity. When man to man 
shall brother be the world over, and war shall no 
longer drench cornfields with blood: when women 
are everywhere honoured, and children are pro- 
tected: when cities are full of health and holiness, 
and when the burden of misery has been lifted 
from the poor, then the world shall know Christ 
has not died in vain, and His vision shall be ful- 
filled. 

A fond imagination which only tantalizes and 
disheartens! It is natural to say so, but magnifi- 
cent dreams have come true. Suppose you had 
been on the sorrowful way when Jesus was being 
led to His doom, and women were pitying this 
innocent prophet whose hopes had been so rudely 
dashed, and whose life had been so _ piteously 
wasted. ‘‘Ah!”’ they cry, “His illusions have been 
scattered, and His brief day is going down in dark- 
ness.’ It appeared so, but was it so? 

Suppose while the kind-hearted people were 
talking, some one had prophesied the career of 
Jesus. They would have laughed and called him 
a visionary, yet which would have been right, the 
people who judged by Jesu’s figure beneath the 


A4 OPTIMISM 


cross, or the man who judged Jesu’s power through 
that cross? the people who looked at the mob of 
Jerusalem, or the man who saw the coming gen- 
erations? There are two ideas of Christ’s cruci- 
fixion in art, and each has its own place. There is 
the realistic scene with the cross raised only a few 
feet from the ground, a Jewish peasant hanging on 
it, a Roman guard keeping order, and a rabble of 
fanatical priests as spectators. That is a fact, if 
, you please, down to the colour of the people’s gar- 
ments and the shape of the Roman spears. Very 
likely that is how it looked and happened. There 
is also the idealistic scene with a cross high and 
majestic on which Christ is hanging with His face 
hidden. Behind there is an Italian landscape with 
a river running through a valley, trees against the 
sky, and the campanile of a village church. At 
the foot of the cross kneels St. Mary Magdalene, 
on the right at a little distance are the Blessed 
Virgin and St. Francis, on the left St. John and St. 
Jerome. The Roman soldiers and the Jewish crowd 
and that poor cross of Roman making have dis- 
appeared as a shadow. The great cross of the 
divine Passion is planted in the heart of the Church 
and of the race for ever. Facts? Certainly, but 


OPTIMISM 45 


which is the fact, that or this? Which is nearer to 
the truth, the Christ of the sorrowful way or the 
Christ at God’s right hand ? 

Have there been no grounds for optimism? — 
Has the splendid hope of Christ been falsified? 
One may complain that the centuries have gone 
slowly, and that the chariot of righteousness has 
dragged upon the road. But Christ has been 
coming and conquering. There is some difference 
between the statistics of the Upper Room, and the 
Christian Church to-day; between slavery in the 
Roman Empire and to-day; between the experience 
of women in the pre-Christian period and to-day; 
between the reward of labour in Elizabeth’s Eng- 
land and to-day; between the use of riches in the 
eighteenth century, and the beginning of the twen- 
tieth; between pity for animals in the Georgian 
period and to-day. If we are not uplifted by this 
beneficent progress, it is because we have grown 
accustomed to the reign of Christianity, and are 
impatient for greater things. We are apt to be 
pessimists, not because the Kingdom of God is 
halting, but because it has not raced; not because 
the Gospel has failed to build up native churches 
in the ends of the earth with their own forms, 


46 OPTIMISM 


literature, martyrs, but because every man has not 
yet believed the joyful sound. 

There are two grounds for the unbounded optim- 
ism of our faith, and the first is God. How did 
such ideas come into the human mind? Where did 
the imagination of the prophets and apostles catch 
fire? where is the spring of the prayers and aspira- 
tions of the saints? Whence do all light and all 
love come? Surely from God. Can we imagine 
better than God can do? Can we demand a fairer 
world than God will make? Were not the Greek 
philosophers right in thinking that our ideals are 
eternal, and are kept with God? It is not a ques- 
tion of our imagining too much, but too little, of 
being too soon satisfied. 

So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned 
What God accounteth happiness, 

Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess 
What hell may be his punishment 

For those who doubt if God invent 

Better than they. 

The other ground for optimism is Jesus Christ. 
Does it seem that the perfect life for the individual, 
and for the race, is too sublime: that it is a dis- 
tant and unattainable ideal? It is well enough to 
give the Sermon on the Mount, and true enough 


OPTIMISM 47 


that if it were lived the world would be like Heaven, 
but then has it ever been lived? Yes, once at 
least, and beyond all question. Christ lived as He 
taught. He bade men lose their lives and He lost 
His; He bade men trample the world under foot, 
and He trampled it; He commanded men to love, 
and He loved even unto death. This He did as the 
forerunner of the race. Why not again with Christ 
as Captain? Why not always, why not every- 
where? Is not He the standard of humanity now, 
and is not He its Redeemer? Has He not been 
working in the saints who have reminded the world 
of God?” Will He not continue to work till all men 
everywhere come to the stature of perfection ? 

Only one institution in human society carries 
the dew of its youth; and through the conflict of 
the centuries still chants its morning song. It is 
the religion of Jesus. I do not mean the Christian- 
ity which exhausts its energy in the criticism of 
documents, or the discussion of ritual—the Chris- 
tianity of scholasticism, or ecclesiasticism, for there 
is no lift in that pedantry. I do not mean the 
Christianity which busies itself with questions of 
labour and capital, meat and drink, votes and 
politics, for there is no lift in that machinery. I 


48 OPTIMISM 


mean the Christianity which centres in the Person 
of the Son of God, with His revelation of the Father, 
and His Gospel of Salvation with His hope of 
immortality and His victory of soul. This Chris- 
tianity endures while civilizations exhaust them- 
selves and pass away, and the face of the world 
changes. Its hymns, its prayers, its heroism, its 
virtues, are ever fresh and radiant. If a man de- 
sires to be young in his soul let him receive the 
spirit of Jesus, and bathe his soul in the Christian 
hope. Ah, pessimism is a heartless, helpless spirit. 
If one despairs of the future for himself, and for 
his fellows, then he had better die at once. It is 
despair which cuts the sinews of a man’s strength 
and leaves him at the mercy of temptation. Do you 
say what can I do, because the light round me is 
like unto darkness? Climb the mast till you are 
above the fog which lies on the surface of the water, 
and you will see the sun shining on the spiritual 
world, and near at hand the harbour of sweet con- 
tent. True, we must descend again to the travail 
of life, but we return assured that the sun is above 
the mist. Do you say what is the use of fighting, 
for where I stand we have barely held our own? 
Courage! It was all you were expected to do, and 


"OPTIMISM 490 


while you stood fast the centre has been won, and 
the issue of the battle has been decided. It was a 
poet who had his own experience of adversity, and 
was cut down in the midst of his days, who bade 
his comrades be of good cheer. 


Say not, the struggle nought availeth, 
The labour and the wounds are vain, 
The enemy faints not nor faileth, 
And as things have been they remain. 


If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars. 

It may be in yon smoke concealed, 
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers, 
And, but for you, possess the field. 


For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
Seem here no painful inch to gain, 

Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 


And not by eastern windows only, 
When daylight comes, comes in the light, 
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, 
But westward look, the land is bright. 


LF. 4 


IV 


JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION 


“A certain man said unto Him ‘Lord, I will follow Thee 
whithersoever Thou goest.’ And Jesus said unto him, 
‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the 
Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.’”—St. Luke 


ix. 57-58. 

12 what is rare be remarkable, then this incident 

when Jesus refused three disciples is the most 
remarkable in His life, and comes upon us with a 
shock. One can find many occasions when Jesus 
encouraged men to become His disciples, no other 
when He set Himself to discourage them. His 
preaching was one long invitation to enter the King- 
dom of God; He used to say with emphasis that He 
would cast none out: He made social pariahs wel- 
come; He sat at meat with publicans. But it is 
evident that Jesus on occasion could be cold in 
manner, could damp out enthusiasm, refuse offers 
of allegiance, speak forbidding words, and close the 


gates of God’s Kingdom in a man’s face. Three 
50 


JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION J 51 


men heard Jesus preach, and were so moved that 
they resolved to join His fellowship. The first He 
repelled by an extreme illustration of the hardship 
of a disciple’s lot—he would not have where to lay 
his head; the second He daunted with an almost 
impossible commandment—that he should leave 
without burying his father; the third He declared 
unfit for His Kingdom—because he wished to bid 
his friends farewell. This was the drastic way in 
which Jesus dealt with three apparently honest men. 

The action of the Master is so unexpected that 
one begins to look below the surface for reasons, and 
the case of the Scribe, to go no farther, explains the 
situation. One gathers that he had been arrested, 
impressed, convinced, and finally carried away by 
the teaching of Jesus. What freshness, reality, in- 
sight, grace! Jesus of Nazareth is a prince of Rab- 
bis, and must certainly found a new school. The 
Scribe will attach himself to this master of the future 
and become His follower. He will go with Him to 
the synagogues of Galilee or the Temples of Jeru- 
salem. He will not be ashamed to stand by His side 
in great public controversies, or to support His doc- 
trine. Unfortunately for the enthusiastic student 
this was not the kind of loyalty Christ asked from 


52. JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION 


His disciples: His demand was for something more 
practical and commonplace. Jesus was not a Rabbi, 
dazzling people with original views, and asking them 
to accept new creeds. He was a master calling on 
men to live a certain life, and to fulfil a certain law. 
His disciples were not to be students idolizing a bril- 
liant teacher, but servants obeying a daily law. This 
Scribe must do more than change his opinions, he 
must change his company. His idea was to follow 
Christ’s lead in the synagogue amid the debates of 
the learned; he must go with Christ to the field in 
the service.of ordinary people. He was willing to 
put on Christ’s doctrine as one puts on a fashionable 
dress. Was he ready to identify himself with 
Christ’s society? ‘You wish,’ said Christ, “to be 
My disciple, and you think of discipleship from the 
Scribe’s standpoint. Understand that wild animals 
live more comfortably than I. Is My cross as grate- 
ful as My creed?” We gather that it was not, and 
that the Scribe’s exuberant impulse disappeared be- 
fore this chilling prospect. 

If it should seem that Christ dealt rather hardly 
with this overflowing Scribe, let us remind ourselves 
that it was in perfect keeping with His attitude to 
mere emotion. His teaching had always a keen edge 


JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION 53 


to that large class which is more inclined to gush 
than to do. There was a son who was most polite 
and said that he would go to till his father’s vine- 
yard, but he never went. That is emotion. There is 
a shallow soil in which the seed springs up suddenly, 
grows quickly and as soon as the sun has risen with- 
ers away. That is an emotional nature.. There was 
a householder who made ambitious plans for a tower, 
and laid a big foundation, and could get no farther, 
and was laughed at for his foolishness. That is the 
feebleness of emotion. There were certain people 
who stood at the door of the Heavenly Kingdom, 
and expected to receive a welcome because they could 
say “Lord, Lord,” but had no entrance because 
they had not done the will of God. That is the end 
of emotion. True emotion which resulted in brave 
action never failed to receive its meed of approbation 
from Jesus, to whom the tears of Mary Magdalene 


and- the spikenard of Mary of Bethany were most 
dear. But Jesus was never weary of denouncing 


false emotion which ends with itself, and He has 
done all He could to save His disciples from its en- 
ticing snare. 

The Master was not content to pillory this shallow 
feeling in parables; He did not spare it when it ap- 


54 JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION 


peared in those whom He loved, and considered sin- 
cere. No one appreciated more deeply the enthu- 
siasm of women, none ever appealed more success- 
fully to the immense devotion of a woman’s nature. 
But none has ever been more faithful in warning 
women to bring their engaging sentiments to the 
touchstone of action. When Salome, motherlike, 
asked that her sons should sit on thrones in Christ’s 
Kingdom, He reminded her that they must first 
drink His cup and be baptized with His baptism. 
When Jesu’s words greatly moved some hearer’s 
heart, and one cried out “‘ Blessed is the woman that 
bore Thee,’ He could not let her pass without de- 
claring another person still more blessed—the one 
who heard His Word and kept it. But never did 
Jesus so condemn fruitless emotion as on the way to 
the cross. The daughters of Jerusalem had been 
less than women if they had not wept when Jesus 
passed, weak with suffering, bearing on His body the 
marks of the scourging, and tottering beneath the 
weight of His cross. They did weep, but that day 
their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons had cried, 
“Crucify, crucify Him.” It was rather late to pity 
Him now; their tears were a poor atonement for the 
crucifixion. Better now to weep for themselves, and 


JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION 55 


for their children, since the judgment of God must 
be hanging over fanatical Jerusalem. There is a 
vast difference between the tears of penitence and 
the tears of pity; between the women who afforded 
Christ a home and the women who came to look at 
Him in the “Sorrowful Way.” 

Certainly Jesus cannot be said to have encouraged 
emotion, and people of various kinds may benefit by 
His discipline. For instance, some person of refined 
nature is charmed by Jesu’s teaching in the Gospels. 
He has never heard anything in literature or religion 
to compare with Jesu’s parables, beatitudes, com- 
mandments, and discourses. Like the Scribe he 
also will be a Christian and will follow Christ any- 
where, but is he prepared to be one with the Peters 
and Johns who make up the Christian society, and 
-be their brother in the love of God? That is another 
matter. A second person with a sympathetic heart 
is much touched by Jesu’s compassion for the mis- 
erabies. No religion and no party is so full of pity, 
and so it must be good to be a Christian. Yes, but 
suppose that Christ should expect more than an 
esthetic interest, that He should ask His disciples to 
make definite sacrifices for His sake. That is an- 
other matter. Or a third person has a quick sensi- 


56 JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION 


bility and is much affected by Christ’s promise of 
mercy. But he forgets that not one sin can be for- 
given until he has pardoned his own enemy, till he 
has abandoned his favourite vice, till he has made 
restitution for wrongdoing. That is another matter. 
Impulses to admire what is true, to sympathize with 
what is sad, and to be reconciled to God, are in 
themselves excellent, but let it be clearly understood 
that though Christianity may begin with feeling it 
must end in practice, and that the best thing for an 
enthusiastic person is to ask this question—Am I 
ready to share Christ’s cross? 

There are two reasons why Jesus was so critical 
of emotion, and so anxious that it should be rigidly 
tested, and one is that Christianity itself is charged 
with the most beautiful emotion. Some religions are 
not likely to excite any one, as for instance an ethical 
code. One can no more wax hot about morality 
than over the multiplication table. When a man has 
no more generous idea of religion than paying his 
debts, and going to church, he is in no danger of 
heated feelings. But Jesu’s teaching is not a series of 
commonplaces, nor is His Kingdom a mechanical 
institution. His religion is an evangel, a revelation, 
a splendid imagination. When the spirit of Chris- 


JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION _ 57 


tianity touches our soul we must take care while we 
rejoice in the ideal that we lay stress on the real; 
while we set our sails to the favoring gale that we 
have a solid keel on our ship. It is good to believe 
in God’s fatherhood if we keep within us a child’s 
heart; good to teach human brotherhood if we be 
doing a brother’s part; good to magnify the cross if 
we are carrying our own; good to think of Heaven 
if we have its earnest in holiness within. None could 
have heard the Sermon on the Mount without wish- 
ing to accept its persuasive principles, but Jesus 
warned His hearers that unless they carried His words 
into action they were building their house upon the 
sand, and He insisted that the house of the soul must 
stand on the rock of practical obedience. 

The other reason springs from the constitution of 
human nature; emotion is so seductive. The heart 
has a more delightful climate than either the con- 
science or the reason, and they who make their home 
there are apt to be enervated. Enthusiasm about 
some good cause, admiration of some brave deed, 
sympathy with some tale of suffering, indignation at 
some flagrant wrong, even personal grief over some 
loss, are subtle pleasures. The nerves of the soul 
vibrate; we have the experience of a gentle electric 


58 JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION 


shock. People read sensational pictures, go to the 
theatre, follow criminal trials, and officiate at trage- 
dies, because sensation is a luxury. Add religion to 
feeling and you raise it to its highest power. Nothing 
can be more agreeable to a sympathetic nature than 
to sing hymns of passion, to dwell on the love of God, 
and the sufferings of Christ, to talk about spiritual 
experiences and heavenly hopes. Nothing can be 
harder than denying ourselves, and keeping Christ’s 
commandments, and serving others, and submitting 
to the divine grace. Nothing is more severe than 
duty, nothing is more soothing than sentiment. 
Many persons therefore prefer to take their religion 
in feeling rather than in practice. There are men to 
whose eyes you can bring tears by a few words, but 
from whose pocket you could not wring money by 

e eloquence of Demosthenes: and women who 
have a becoming enthusiasm for goodness in the 
drawing-room, but who would not sacrifice their 
pleasures to deliver a soul from death. If there be 
no correspondence between emotion and action, then 
religion is an inflated paper currency with no gold 
for its redemption, and the issue must be spiritual 
bankruptcy. 

There is a nervous disease in which the blood 


JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION - 59 


which ought to nourish the muscles has been with- 
drawn to the head, so that the muscles are depleted 
and the brain is congested. The patient can do no 
work, but he is eager, feverish, restless. The spiritual 
nature is subject to a similar disease; the energy 
which should expend itself in action is swallowed up 
in sentiment; there is an overflow of emotion, and 
a paralysis of action. Alone in our room with an in- 
spiring book there is nothing which we do not 
achieve. We nurse lepers, rescue the fallen, die at 
the stake, make costly sacrifices, move multitudes, 
trample sin under foot, and annex the whole king- 
dom of virtues. We are St. Paul, David Livingstone, 
Florence Nightingale, and General Gordon all in 
one. We are in a third heaven of sublime devotion, 
then we lose our temper because some one recalls us 
to a household duty, or reminds us of an unanswered 
letter. We oscillate between imagination and selfish- 
ness, between passion and indolence. We are de- 
ceiving ourselves daily, counting what we would like 
to do, the same as what we do. Let us be more faith- 
_ ful with ourselves, and more suspicious of every 
emotion which has not been reduced to action. Idle 
excitement destroys the very tissue of the soul, and 
will leave us impotent for any good work, till at last 


60 JESUS’ CRITICISM OF EMOTION 


we walk in a vain show with a profession growing 
ever higher, and a practice sinking ever lower. The 
final judgment of life after all is not emotion but 


action. 


Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control 
That o’er thee swell and throng; 

They will condense within thy soul 

And change to purpose strong. 


But he who lets his feelings run 

In soft lascivious flow 

Shrinks when hard service must be done 
And faints at every blow. 


Faith’s meanest deed more favour bears 
Where hearts and wills are weighed, 

Than brightest transports, choicest prayers, 
Which bloom their hour and fade. 


V 
VISION 


“Your young men shall see visions, and your old men 
shall dream dreams.”—A cts of the A postles ii. 17. 


NE cannot quote this high word of Hebrew 
prophecy without the danger of prejudice. 

We are living in a day when the function of vision 
is depreciated and the faculty itself has almost ceased. 
The blood of the new century is thin and cold; its 
hopes are few and dim. The great poets and novel- 
ists are gone, or are silent; there is no writer left for 
whose new book we watch as for the breaking of the 
day, and whose reading would sustain us through the 
labour of life. No master is rising in painting or in 
music to interpret modern life and add new provinces 
to the kingdom of Art. Science, which last century 
had a career of such matchless success, is now gath- 
ering the fruit of her past discoveries. No wonder 
that thinking people are cynical, and literature is 
pessimistic, and that Mr. Pearson in his National 
Lije and Character declares that there are no more 
conquests for the race. In this age of prosaic 
- thought and pedestrian morality vision suggests 


everything that is unreal and ineffective—fanati- 
61 


62 VISION 


cism, extravagance, sentimentality. Action is a syn- 
onym for everything that is practical and successful 
—industry, shrewdness, and capacity. We are 
afraid of a visionary because he is an incalculable 
element; he will take up with lost causes, propose 
unprofitable schemes, tamper with ancient institu- 
tions, and be indifferent to the motive of money. The 
practical man, with the multiplication table for his 
creed and the sphere of sight for his province, in- 
spires you with confidence. Just in proportion as a 
man is cleansed from the visionary element is he ser- 
viceable for the mission of life; just in proportion as 
he sees visions is he unreliable. If young men began 
to see visions and old men to dream dreams it would 
be perilous both for Church and State. “Facts,” we 
insist, ‘‘ give us facts,”’ and we secretly add, “Beware 
of fancies, for they too often mean vision.” 
Certainly let us always keep in touch with fact. 
But what about the chief fact of nature itself? Two 
worlds are ours, and each must be discerned by its 
own faculty. One is made up of places, people, cir- 
cumstances, possessions—the physical; the other of 
ideas, feelings, affections, expectations—the spir- 
itual. We are conscious of the house we live in, the 
faces that look at us, the task we do, the afflictions 
that befall us. We are conscious also of the sins that 


‘VISION 63 


are past, of the love we have tasted, of the aims we 
cherish, of the sorrow that wounded our hearts. 
Both worlds surround us, one of them tangible like 
water, the other intangible like air. We see one with 
our eyes, we fell the other with our soul. 


God keeps His holy mysteries 

Just on the outside of man’s dream, 
In diapason slow we think, 

To hear their pinions rise and sink 
While they float pure beneath His eyes 
Like swans adown a stream. 


Things nameless, which in passing so, 
Do touch us with a subtle grace, 

We say who passes? They are dumb, 
We cannot see them go or come; 
Their touches fall, soft, cold as snow 
Upon a blind man’s face. 


In truth the physical represents the spiritual, and 
just as we have vision we detect the soul of things. 
To one man a poem is so much printed stuff, to an- 
other the interpretation of life. A picture is to one so 
much brilliant colouring, to another a window into 
eternity. An oratorio is to one so much harmonized 
sound, to another an epic of righteousness. A face 
is to one so many features, to another a biography. 
With sight you possess the outer world, with vision 
you enter into the inner world. Poets only illustrate 
this faculty, they do not monopolize it. No one is 
unconscious of the unseen, no one is insensible to its 


64 VISION 


influence. As the waves lap the soft sand, and leave 
their trace, so does the unseen impress our soul. Let 
the most prosaic man see the “rose of dawn,” the 
expanse of ocean where the sunbeams bathe at noon, 
the mists wreathing round a mountain top, the corn 
falling before the sickle, the sun going down blood 
red behind the western hills, and there will be 


Stirrings of his soul which dart 
Through the barrier of flesh. 


He will remember his boyhood, he will revisit his 
home, he will be filled with tender imaginations, he 
will make strenuous resolutions. When Words- 
worth’s ‘Country Girl” heard a thrush singing in 
London she was again in the North Countrie. 


-A mountain ascending, a vision of trees, 
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, 
And a river flows on, through the vale of Cheapside. 


Vision as well as sight is a faculty of our nature. 
Yes, and what about the facts of life—the action 
of which we make so much? If you wish to discover 
the source of a man’s strength you must trace his 
life to some secret spring amid the everlasting hills. 
As the years come and go his life will re-inforce itself 
from many quarters, and cut its channel through 
many rocks, but every great life is a jet from the 
central waters, and on to the eternal sea will carry 
its first colour. Some felicitous phrase in a sermon 


VISION 65 


reveals the living Christ, as when an unknown monk 
drops the curtain from an Ascension. Some revela- 
tion is given to the agonized heart wrestling through 
the darkness unto the breaking of the day. Some 
sorrow fills the atmosphere with tears and brings 
the horizon nearer where earth and Heaven meet. 
No man tells what he has seen, nor is he able to 
explain what happened, but the vision will remain 
till the last of earth’s shadows pass, and the man 
knows even as he is known. 

Moses beheld in the desert a bush burning with 
fire and not consumed, and in that day entered 
upon his life work. Nothing would ever daunt that 
man’s faith who for the briefest moment had 
caught the sheen of the Divine Presence. The 
rocks of the desert would yield water to God’s 
people, and the skies drop manna; across the 
desert he would see the land flowing with milk and 
with honey and be content to die. For him hence- 
forward the world was transfigured, and “every 
common bush” was “afire with God.” King 
Uzziah’s death chamber, that satire on human 
power, is suddenly changed into the heavenly tem- 
ple, and Isaiah consecrates his life to the Holy One 
of Israel. St. Peter catches, as it were through a 
rent in the peasant garments of Jesus, the spiritual 

LE. 5 


66 VISION 


splendour of His nature, and confesses the prophet 
of Nazareth to be the Son of God. St. Paul, torn 
between the grip of hereditary religion and the 
pleading of Jesus’ spirit, receives the heavenly 
revelation and goes forth to conquer the world for 
Christ. St. John, flung like a dry seaweed on the 
coast of Patmos, beholds the open Heaven and 
Jesus at the right hand of God, and writes the epic 
of salvation. John Bunyan is cast into Bedford 
Gaol, and in that fortunate solitude dreams the 
Pilgrim’s Progress. St. Francis goes out from the 
supper table, and beneath the sweet Umbrian sky 
woos his bride of poverty. No bush is common to 
him who has eyes to see; a cell becomes a universe 
to him whose soul is receptive. A lonely island is 
the annex of Heaven when a man has a pure heart. 
Sublime experiences which come and go swiftly, 
but do not leave a man the same. The sun sets, 
but the afterglow remains. The vision is hence- 
forth a light upon the man’s path, and a burning 
hope within his soul. 

Without vision how could any man have endur- 
ance or patience? What is the testimony of sight? 
A ghastly struggle for existence, a masterful princi- 
ple of evil, a perpetual human disability, a weary 
round of suffering, and then the silence of death, . 


VISION 6y 


with only here and there some achievement of faith, 
or some victory of righteousness to illuminate the 
darkness. What is the testimony of vision? An 
undying purpose of God, a regulated discipline of 
the soul, a constant environment of the spiritual 
and the long vista of everlasting life. Sight can 
only show us the shadow, but vision reveals the 
substance. Sight shows us the means, but vision 
the goal to which things are moving. Sight shows 
us what is, but vision assures us what ought to be, 
and what shall be. 

There are four persons who need the life of 
vision, and the first is the man with the narrow life. 
Just as you look on the things which are seen or 
unseen your life will be commonplace or heroic, 
your labour drudgery or service, your mind a foun- 
tain of bitterness or sweetness, your outlook a dead 
wall or the eternal horizon. What a handful of 
bare facts are the incidents of your life—there are 
not enough to make a paragraph from the register 
of your birth to the register of your death. Cast 
this dry seed into the fostering soil of imagination, 
and what a harvest. Your birth—did not your soul 
come from God “with trailing clouds of glory?” 
Your home—is it not the prophecy of our Father’s 
House? Your business—is it not your task in the 


68 VISION 


great household of Christ? Your marriage—is it 
not the sacrament of the divine love? Your death 
—will it not be the revelation of the spiritual world ? 
This poor letterpress is changing into a poem. 
What a wealth of glory may be poured into obscure 
lives, as when a highland cottage is filled with the 
light of the setting sun, because the window is open 
to the west. William Blake lived with his wife in 
two rooms, and when the fashionable world beat 
upon his door he saw it come and go unmoved. 
“Leave me,” he prayed, “my visions, and peace.” 

Vision is also the consolation of the man with 
the hard life. There are trials which cannot be 
belittled or talked away, as for instance an incura-. 
ble disease, disappointing children, an empty home, 
a secret sorrow. This is a case where the unseen 
world must be brought in to redress the balance of 
the seen. There are two scales to the beam, one 
hanging on this side of the veil, full of tribulation, 
the other beyond the veil, weighed down with 
heavenly recompense. Consider the peaceable fruits 
‘of righteousness, the victory of tribulation, the fel- 
lowship of suffering, the company of Heaven. 
Matthew Arnold was greater as a poet than as a 
critic, and he was never finer than in one of his 
religious pieces. 


VISION 69 


*Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead 
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, 
And the pale weaver through his windows seen 
In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited. 


I met a preacher there I knew, and said: 

“Tll and o’erworked, how fare you in this scene?” 
“Bravely!” said he, “for I of late have been 

Much cheer’d with thoughts of Christ the Living Bread!” 


Oh, human soul! as long as thou canst so 

Set up a mark of everlasting light 

Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow, 

To cheer thee and to right thee if thou roam 

Not with lost toil thou labourest thro’ the night, 

Thou mak’st the Heaven, thou hop’st, indeed thy home. 


Another who needs vision is the man with the 
busy life. If it be not always easy to realize God 
in solitude, it is hardest to believe in the spiritual 
when one is occupied every day with the material. 
It is not wonderful that men of affairs are apt to 
be worldly; it would be wonderful if they were 
unworldly, for the dyer’s hands must take the 
colour of the dye he works in. Unless a merchant 
corrects his sight by vision, how can he preserve a 
spiritual atmosphere? His one hope is that of the 
diver, who as he goes down through the encom- 
passing waters is supplied with air from above, so 
that while he gathers treasure in the depths he 
breathes another world. When some speculators 
went to Faraday and showed how he could enrich 
himself by his discoveries, the father of modern 


4O VISION 


science answered, “I am too busy to make money.” 
He was impervious to worldly ambition, because he 
was consecrated to science. You may trust a man 
with any earthly riches who has his treasure in 
Heaven; you may place on his head any crown who 
has seen Christ’s crown of thorns; you may ap- 
plaud him to the echo who is watching the lips of 
Christ. Vision has many a victory for the martyrs, 
but one of its chief victories belongs to the man 
who, immersed in the affairs of this world, is a citi- 
zen of the world to come, who has 
Sought the soul’s world—spurned the worms. 

And, last of all, vision is the only reinforcement 
of the Christian soldier. The true man does not 
grudge his sacrifice of time or toil if he can see its 
fruit, but what he sees is often waste and defeat. 
He envies the builder whose wall rises before him 
foot by foot, the ploughman who adds furrow to 
furrow across the stubble, the fisher who comes 
home at daybreak with his boat full. If he were 
only sure that his work was not in vain, if he could 
only see the Kingdom of God coming. This he 
cannot always see, and therefore he must believe. 
He must cleanse the vision of his soul, and look for- 
ward. He must turn his eyes from earth unto the 
city which is coming down from Heaven like a 


VISION 71 


bride adorned for her husband. And for the suc- 
cess of that day he must live, and fight, and die. 
His visions will one day be sight; his dreams will 
one day be fact. 


Happy he whose inward ear 
Angel comfortings can hear 
O’er the rabble’s laughter; 
And, while hatred’s faggots burn, 
Glimpses through the smoke discern 
Of the good hereafter. 


Knowing this, that never yet 
Share of Truth was vainly set, 
In the world’s wide fallow; 
After hands shall sow the seed, 
After hands from hill and mead, 
Reap the harvests yellow. 


Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, 
Must the moral pioneer 

From the Future borrow; 
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain 
And, on midnight’s sky of rain, 

Paint the golden morrow! 


VI 
CONVERSION 
“Repent ye therefore and be converted.”—Aets iii. 19. 


OSTER used to say ‘“‘Wemust put a new 
face upon things,” and there are times 
when one would like to gather the whole mass of 
religious terminology and bury it in the depths 
of the sea, because one is afraid that the beauty 
of many spiritual ideas is concealed by their 
shabby garments. The words in which we 
clothe them are like Scottish bank notes, which 
were perfectly clean when they were first issued, 
but have been soiled as they passed through 
many greasy hands. When the religious term 
was created it expressed a genuine experience of 
the soul in a becoming fashion. After it had 
been repeated by men who did not feel its power, 
it degenerated into cant, and we should wish to 
see it withdrawn. 
Yet that unpleasant bank note has the same 


value as at the beginning of its career, and a 
72 


CONVERSION 73 


religious experience is eternal. No word has 
been more despised in worldly society or more 
laughed at in certain circles of literature than 
conversion. But conversion states one of the 
most profound realities of the spiritual life, and 
affords one of the most convincing evidences of 
an unseen world. “Blame not the word con- 
version,” says Carlyle; “‘ rejoice rather that such 
a word signifying such a thing has come to light 
in our modern era, though hidden from the 
wisest ancient.... What to Plato was an 
hallucination and to Socrates a chimera is now 
clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your 
Wesleys and the poorest of their pietists and 
methodists.”’ 

The idea of conversion is not the monopoly 
of one religious school nor of any single religion. 
The revival preacher of the Protestant Church 
corresponds to the preaching friar of the Roman 
Church, and the ascetic of Christianity is repre- 
sented by the fakir of the East. The Incarna- 
tion is at the base of Buddhism, and the doctrine 
of the Trinity is embodied in the ancient Egyptian 
religion. There has been no religion without 
conversion,and where philosophy replaced religion 


74 CONVERSION 


you haveconversion. When one of the philosoph- 
ical revivalists, as Dr. Dill tells us in his Roman 
Society, was holding a meeting, an Athenian 
of the better class came in, careless and intoxi- 
cated. As he listened to Zenocrates he was 
deeply impressed, and tearing off his garland of 
roses he began a new life and lived to become 
himself the head of that academy of philosophy. 
Plutarch used to go out upon a mission, and after 
he had preached he would invite men to remain 
behind and open to him their spiritual troubles. 
Conversion is a human incident, and its records 
are among the most real of human documents. 

Conversion is to be carefully distinguished 
from regeneration. Regeneration is the abso- 
lute act of the divine spirit ; the human soul is 
altogether passive ; regeneration can only take 
place once. Itisthe great mystery of life and the 
supreme act of the Eternal. God gives us spring 
inthe physical world, in the spiritual world He 
renews the soul. No man can regenerate his 
neighbour, and no man knows when he was re- 
generated himself. ‘‘ The spirit bloweth where 
it listeth.” 

Conversion is within the sphere of human 


CONVERSION 73 


experience, and in it the will of man co-operates 
with the will of God. The word means to turn 
round and to go in the opposite direction. When 
the human soul leaves God it goes from home ; 
when the human soul returns to God it returns 
home, and this turning round and this going back 
is conversion. Regeneration is the spiritual 
counterpart of conversion, and as regeneration 
is a Supreme act of God, conversion is the supreme 
experience of the human soul. 

Professor James in his Varieties of Religious 
Experiences, the most scientific book on the 
phenomena of the religious consciousness which 
has ever been published, refers to two classes 
whom he calls the “‘ Once Born ” and the “‘ Twice 
Born.” He is really thinking of conversion, not 
of regeneration, and he suggests that while every 
one needs to be regenerated there are people who 
do not need to be converted. ‘“‘ God,” hesays, 
“has two families of children on this earth, 
the ‘once born’ and the ‘twice born.’” Of the 
latter he writes—“‘ God is to them the impersona- 
tion of kindness and beauty; of human sin they 
know perhaps little in their own past and not 
very much in the world, and human suffering 


6 CONVERSION 


does but melt them to tenderness.” Are we not 
accustomed too readily to assume that every 
human being has spent his first years in wandering 
from God, and that there must come a time for 
him to retrace his steps. But is this so? When 
we offer our children to God in prayer at birth, 
does the prayer count for nothing ? When we 
present our children at the font in baptism does 
the act mean nothing? Why should we take 
for granted that the child has not then been set 
with its face towards Heaven? Why should 
we not take heart of grace and believe that the 
child has been converted? Have we never 
known people who have always had the light of 
God’s face upon their life, and who all day long 
have chanted their morning song? Have we 
never had friends among the once born, and 
whose whole life has been a unity? I do not 
mean they did not sin ; converted people sin. Or 
that they were perfect ; converted people are not 
perfect. But their faces were in the right direction 
from the beginning. One of the most charming 
and oldest ministers of Jesus Christ in America, 
Dr. Everett Hale,of Boston, says—“‘I always knew 
God loved me and I was always grateful to Him 


CONVERSION 77 


for the world He placed me in. A child who is 
early taught that he is God’s child, that he may 
live and move and make his being in God, will 
take life more kindly, and will probably make 
more of it, than one who is told he is born a child 
of wrath.” People are troubled because they 
cannot remember the day of their conversion. 
Does it matter very much that one does not know 
when the sun rose in his room if he was in the 
light when he waked? Some hand opened the 
shutters early when he was unconscious. Behind 
him was a race of godly ancestors ; one gave him 
the colour of his eyes: another the way he 
walked : athird his pleasant temper: a fourth his 
trick of imagination; whyshould not they also 
have given him his faith? Let him be thankful 
that he belongs to the happy class who have no 
bitter regrets, no broken lives, no ugly memories. 

There are other people who will require to be 
converted several times before they come to the 
Heavenly Kingdom. St. Peter was once a fisher- 
man and learned to use rough language. He met 
Jesus and became a changed man—that was his 
first conversion. Then came that awful tragedy 
when he denied his Lord with an oath just as he 


78 CONVERSION 


used to swear at a fellow fisherman on the Lake 
of Galilee. He had turned round the wrong way, 
he was diverted. His Lord prophesied that he 
would repent, and in anticipation of that day 
Jesus said to him—‘“‘ When thou art converted 
strengthen the brethren.” He went out and 
wept bitterly—that was his second conversion. 
When St. Paul rebuked him afterwards for his 
temporizing conduct, and called upon him to be 
more straightforward, that may have been a third 
conversion. One feels that the apostle John had 
never been converted because he had always been 
in fellowship with God; one feels that the 
apostle Peter would be converted several times 
before he came to perfection. 

There are other Americans beside Dr. Hale, 
and I knew a Western who was not particularly 
well read nor particularly cultured in manner. 
He was a man who had lived through hard times 
and had done rough deeds. One day he intro- 
duced me to a woman with much respect. “‘ She 
is,” he said, “‘ the widow of the minister who con- 
verted me the first time. I have been converted 
six times, but the first was the hardest.” His 
was the experience of the apostle Peter. He had 


CONVERSION 79 


been turned round more than once, and Ihad an 
impression the last time I saw him that he had 
passed through his crowning conversion. If any 
one is conscious of conversion, once or more, he 
never can doubt the grace of God, or the immor- 
tality of his soul, or the world to which he belongs. 
Within his own life he has the evidence of the 
direct interference of God. 

It is impossible to standardize conversion, 
because you cannot reduce human nature to a 
uniformity. As long as every man has his own 
history, ancestry, and idiosyncrasy, there will 
be many kinds of conversion. There is only one 
God to return to and one Father’s House,but these 
are innumerable far countries, and John Bunyan 
is not the only man who has been converted. 
Perhaps the most conventional conversion is 
moral, when a man is turned from sin to holiness. 
Some people are kept from God not by worldliness 
or unbelief, but by the power of fleshly sins. 
From their childhood they have been held in the 
bondage of the senses, and they have been the 
slaves of their passions. They may not have 
sinned in act, but they have sinned in their im- 
agination. It does not follow that their nature 


80 CONVERSION 


is coarser, it may be richer; their blood may not 
be fouler, it may be redder. A spring of water 
if it be banked will water a glen, if it run at large 
will make a morass. Their conversion will not 
be the destruction but the redemption of their 
passion. St. Mary Magdalene went astray from 
the wealth of her love, and when her soul came 
back to its home she washed Christ’s feet with her 
tears. Her passion was glorified, and according 
to an old tradition, when the body of Christ was 
taken down from the cross, St. Mary Magdalene 
had His feet again, and this time she washed away, 
not the dust of the road, but the blood where- 
with He had redeemed her. St. Augustine had a 
nature fired with the African sun,and he fought 
hard with the awful tyranny of his lusts. 
“‘How long,” he cried, “‘O Lord how long.” 
With a single blow in the garden scene Christ 
broke the chain of sin, and later St. Augustine 
wrote—‘‘ Thou didst cast out my sins by coming 
in Thyself, thou greater sweetness.” 

Another form of conversion is spiritual, and it 
is the experience, not of a publican and sinner, 
but of a Scribe and Pharisee. He has not gone 
astray as the sinners do; he has lived with God 


CONVERSION 8r 
all his days ; he is not the younger but the elder 
brother. But there are two ways of living with 
God. This man has not been docile, he has been 
servile; he has not been filial, he has been 
menial. His idea of God is a hard task-master, 
and his spirit has been that of a hireling. It is 
an unspeakable change when a Pharisee discovers 
that God is not hard or uncharitable, but that 
He is gracious and magnanimous. When St. 
Paul found that he was not expected to live in 
the gloom of Mount Sinai, but in the light of 
Calvary,and that God was not a lawgiver but a 
father, he was converted from legality into grace. 
One day our Scots saint, Erskine of Linlathen, 
met a Highland shepherd on the moor and said 
to him, “ Donald, do you know the Father?” The 
Highlander only knew the “ creator,” “ lawgiver ” 
and “judge:” so Mr. Erskine preached his 
Gospel of the Fatherhood to him. Next year he 
was on the moor again and the shepherd came to 
him and said, “‘ I know the Father.’”’ Dr. Chal- 
mers, our chief Scots Kirkman of recent times, had 
the same experience and the same kindly trans- 
formation. He was always an exemplary parish 
clergyman, but for many years he had no sense 

LF. 6 


82 CONVERSION 


of the spirituality of religion. There came a 
great change over him, and from that day he was 
a power in Scotland, and he tasted the fullness 
of life. On the last night of his life as he walked 
in his garden he was overheard saying, ‘‘ Oh my 
dear Heavenly Father.’’ He lay down to sleep, 
and in the morning they found he was with the 
Father. 

A third form of conversion is intellectual. 
Nathaniel was not able to believe that Jesus was 
the Messiah on account of scripture difficulties, 
and St. Thomas could not believe that Jesus was 
the Son of God on account of rational difficulties. 
The solution of both problems, and of every other 
religious problem, is found in Jesus Christ Himself. 
When a man perplexed on every side places 
himself in Christ’s hand to see whether Christ will 
lead him, and what Christ will do with him, that 
is conversion. Mr. Romanes in A Candid Exam- 
ination of Theism wrote—‘‘ There can no longer 
be any doubt that the existence of a God is 
wholly unnecessary to explain any of the pheno- 
mena of the universe.”” Afterwards he wrote A 
Candid Examination of Religion, and he quotes 
as expressing his own feelings: 


CONVERSION 83 


The mind has a thousand eyes, 
And the heart but one, 

Yet the light of a whole life dies, 
When love is done. 


And he adds—“ How great then is Christianity as 
being the religion of love, and causing men to be- 
lieve both in the cause of love’s supremacy and 
the infinity of God’s love to man.”” Two candid 
examinations, and between them a conversion. 
There is one other form of conversion which is 
practical. One may be neither a sinner, nor a 
Pharisee, nor a doubter, and yet come short 
because he is doing nothing with his life. He 
is easygoing, luxurious, pleasant, useless. Con- 
version for him will be the call to service, per- 
haps in a Sunday school, or in a workman’s 
club, perhaps to work among the sick, or to enter 
a town council. A young Italian was feasting 
with his friends, centuries ago. He wearied of 
the wine and of the jests ; he went out and stood 
beneath the clear blue Umbrian sky. When his 
friends joined him they said—“* You are in love ;” 
and he had the distant look of a man whose 
thoughts were in another world. ‘I am,” said 
St. Francis, “in love, and my bride is called 


84 CONVERSION 


poverty.” No one has been anxious to woo her 
since Jesus lived, and he was going to serve her 
all his days. We know how loyal he was to his 
love, and it was a distinguished Frenchman, and 
not a believer, who said that there never had been 
a Christian like St. Francis since the days of 
Christ Himself. And that is the last and most 
beautiful kind of conversion—conversion to the 
service of our fellow men under the constraint 
of Jesu’s love. 


VII 
THE PASSION OF GOD 


**Tn all their affliction he was afflicted.””—Isaiah Ixiii. 9. 


HE idea of God when not guided by the 
spirit of Christ is apt to oscillate between a 
ferocious deity who is simply an incarnation of the 
remorseless laws of nature—a sublimated chief 
magistrate, and an imbecile deity whois too good- 
natured to punish sin at all—an exceedingly ~ 
foolish father. The former God cannot be loved, 
although He may be obeyed, as one obeys the law 
of gravitation, and the latter cannot be respected 
although He may be liked, as one likes an 
inoffensive person. Were we compelled to 
choose between the two we had better take the 
magistrate, for this world would not be worth 
living in to-day, and the world to come would 
have no attraction, if the reins of government 
were in the hands of a deity who made no dis- 
tinction between righteousness and unrighteous- 
ness, the being whom the French with friendly 


85 


86 THE PASSION OF GOD 


and contemptuous pity call “the good God.” 
With Christian thought we rise to a higher level, 
and the spiritual genius of the Bible is shown, not 
in the reconciliation of mercy and of justice, 
which is a clumsy device of second-rate theology, 
but their inclusion in love. Love taking ven- 
geance on sin which has wronged the human 
soul is justice ; love redeeming the soul is mercy. 
The conflict of emotion in the nature of God 
which the prophets do not hesitate to describe, 
as for instance—‘‘ How shall I give thee up, 
Ephraim, how shall I deliver thee Israel? My 
heart is turned within me. My repentings are 
kindled together,” is not a contradiction. It 
is rather the play of parts in music which leads 
us to final unity; the mixture of contending 
colours in tapestry which blend into one pattern. 

Hebrew piety has taught us two truths 
regarding God which are not always united in 
human thought, but which are necessary to the 
perfect idea, and the first is not His sympathy 
but His spirituality. With travail of soul the 
saints of the Old Testament extricated the Being 
of God from the phenomena of nature and safe- 
guarded His personality from the abstractions 


THE PASSION OF GOD 87 


of philosophy. God who made the clouds His 
chariot and rode upon the wings of the wind was 
the creator of the ends of the earth, and He who 
was the source of righteousness and power dwelt 
with the contrite and humble heart. Mono- 
theism stands midway between the extremes 
of Atheism—the denial that there is any God, 
and Pantheism—the affirmation that everything 
is God. Monotheism means one God over all, 
the same yesterday, to-day,and for ever, and it 
is the basis of all sound thinking. As often as 
the spirituality of God is obscured, either when 
He is imagined as a blind force, or as an imper- 
sonation of sentiment, the religious consciousness 
must fall back on Jewish thought both for health 
and for strength. 

Surely it was enough for one school of religious 
thinkers to bequeath this heritage to the world ! 
But it was an even greater achievement when the 
prophets of Israel infused that pure spirituality 
with a most intimate sympathy and convinced 
many generations that the Holy One of Israel 
is the most gracious Deity who has ever entered 
into the heart of man. When the prophets had 
grasped the transcendence of God and imagined 


88 THE PASSION- OF GOD 


Him raised above this world, which had been 
created by the word of His power, and reigning 
over mankind which is the instrument of His 
will, they might well have been so occupied with 
His majesty as to be unable to compass His pity. 
Yet there is no emotion of the human heart they 
did not assign to God, no tender relation of life 
they did not use to illustrate His love. He isa 
husband whose affection has been wasted upon 
a heartless woman, and whose honour has been 
stained by her unfaithfulness, but who still 
follows her with entreaties to return, because he 
cannot bear the thought that she, who was once 
his wife, should perish in shame. He is a father 
who used to hold his little son by the arms and 
tempt him to walk, and now when the lad has 
grown to be a man, and played the fool exceed- 
ingly, still remembers how Ephraim looked in 
his youth and what he was to his father long ago. 
He is a herdsman who has treated his flock with 
the most tender care, and yet they have dealt 
with Him more stupidly than the unreason- 
able animals with their master; ‘‘for the ox 
knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib, 
but Israel doth not know, my people doth not 


THE PASSION OF GOD 89 


consider.” From every page of Isaiah and 
Hosea the Holy One of Israel stretches out His 
hand to a rebellious and gainsaying people. 
Everywhere the words burn to your touch, and 
you feel throughout the Bible the throb of the 
divine heart. 

As time went on the prophets began to hope 
that God Who had sent so many messages to 
suffering men, and had given them such help in 
their misery, would not be able to contain Him- 
self in the security of His heaven, but that He 
would come after a visible fashion into the midst. 
of this human Gehenna. Is not the Incarnation 
of Christ the convincing climax of the divine 
sympathy ? Jesus born of the Virgin Mary and 
crucified upon the Cross of Calvary is God with 
us, baptized into the very depths of human suffer- 
ing. When Jesus came and lived among us 
the heart of God was laid bare, and every one can 
see in the Gospel that patient wistful love which 
inhabits the secret place of the universe. As 
the father sits upon the housetop, and watches 
the crest of the hill, that he may catch the first 
glimpse of the returning prodigal ; as the house- 
holder makes ready his feast and sends for his 


go THE PASSION OF GOD 


ungrateful guests; as the vine master appeals 
to his disloyal tenants by his own son, we learn 
the expectation of God. As Jesus takes into His 
arms little children whom superior people have 
despised, and casts His charity over penitent 
women whom Pharisees cannot forgive, and 
mourns at the tomb of Lazarus over a friend 
whom He cannot afford to lose, one learns the 
graciousness of God. As Jesus turns sadly from 
Nazareth, the city of His youth, which had re- 
fused Him, and reproaches Capernaum, the city 
of His choice, which did not believe in Him, and 
weeps openly over Jerusalem which knew not the 
day of her visitation, one learns the regret of God. 
And as Jesus appeals to the disciples, ‘‘ Will ye 
also go away ?”’ and prophesies with a sad heart 
that every one of His friends will forsake Him, and 
is cast into a deep gloom by the betrayal of Judas, 
we learn what is almost incredible, but most 
comfortable, the dependence of God. The cross 
is not only in the heart of human life, it is also 
in the heart of God. He is the chief of all 
sufferers, because He is the chief of all lovers. 
One does not forget, while insisting on the 
fellow suffering of God, that there is a certain 


THE PASSION OF GOD oI 


danger in analogies between the human and 
divine, and one lays to heart the warnings against 
Anthropomorphism. But we must not allow 
ourselves to be beaten by big words, and we can 
surely distinguish between what is real and unreal. 
Has it not been the religious expert—the saints, 
the mystics, and the prophets, who have most 
loved to dwell upon this likeness between God 
and man? Has it not been the non-religious 
expert, the philosophers, the scientists, the men 
of letters, who have been most inclined to ridi- 
cule this argument from the seen to the unseen, 
and this representation of the divine nature in 
terms of human experience. If ever the Spirit 
of God inhabited the human breast, He inspired 
the Hebrew prophets and Jesus confirmed their 
character of God in His Evangel. It sounds 
wise to say that we ought not to think of God 
as “‘a magnified non-natural man,” but when 
you drive this argument to its conclusion it comes 
to this, that we must give up thinking about God 
altogether. It is a plea, not against Anthropo- 
morphism but for Agnosticism. What other 
life can we reason from except the highest we 
know? What other language can we use than 


92 THE PASSION OF GOD 


that which clothes the ideas of this life? When 
we stand on the height of our conscience, and 
declare with confidence that truth is right and 
a lie is wrong, are we not entitled to believe that 
what is righteous with us is righteous with God, 
and that what is unrighteous on earth is unright- 
eous in Heaven. Was not John Stuart Mill 
right in essence when he said that if God sent 
him to Hell for refusing to declare that wrong 
was right, to Hell he would go? When we make 
a sacrifice for those whom we love and stand upon 
the height of our heart, may we not be sure that 
our love is the outcome of the passion of God, 
and that if we deal kindly by our flesh and blood 
He will be ten thousand times more kind 
to us all? As Sir Oliver Lodge said in the Hzb- 
bert Journal—“ Let not any worthy human 
attribute be denied to the Deity. Therearemany 
errors but there is one truth in Anthropomorphism 
whatever worthy attribute belongs to man 
.... its existence in the universe is thereby 
admitted. . . . We must blink nothing— 
evolution is a truth, a strange and puzzling 
truth; ‘the whole creation groaneth and travail- 
eth together,’ and the most perfect of all the 


THE PASSION OF GOD 93 


sons of men, the likest God this planet ever saw— 
He to whom many look for their idea of what 
God is, surely He taught us that suffering, and 
sacrifice, and wistful yearning for something not 
yet attainable were not to be regarded as human 
attributes alone.” 

As Newton could have prophesied from the 
properties of a drop of water the possibility of an 
Atlantic, so from human nature atits best we can 
imagine God. Our analogies may be but shadows, 
but they are the shadows of reality. God’s 
ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our 
thoughts, but this is not because they are worse, 
but because they are better. It is not foolishness 
to compare God to an earthly father, only we must 
remember that the heavenly transcends the 
earthly wisdom to an infinite degree. “If ye 
then being evil know howto give good gifts un- 
to your children,” said Christ,“ how much more 
shall your Father which is in Heaven give 
good things to them that ask Him.” It is not 
foolishness to compare God to a mother provided 
we remember that as Heaven is higher than the 
earth, so the tenderness of God transcends even 
a mother’s faithfulness, and for once a mother is 


94 THE PASSION OF GOD 


disparaged beside the compassion of God. “Can 
a mother forget her sucking child that she should 
not have compassion on the son of her womb ? 
Yea, she may forget, yet will not I forget thee.” 

With this glimpse into the heart of God we 
gather riches for our creed because we learn the 
idea of a loveable God. It is possible to think 
correctly about God, but not kindly. Perhaps 
the most masterly definition of God in all theology 
is in the Catechism of the Scots Kirk: ‘“‘Godis a 
spirit infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His 
being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, 
and truth.” According to a pleasant story, the 
divines of the Westminster Assembly were so 
overcome by the majesty of the subject that 
they besought God by one of their number to 
illuminate their minds, and the Scots minister 
who offered prayer used those words. They 
were accepted as an immediate answer, and by 
the standard of theology there could not be a 
more comprehensive description of God. And 
yet this noble utterance has one defect ; it satis- 
fies the intellect, it does not touch the heart. It 
is theology—a study in pure being; it is not 
religion—for it barely suggests a person. With 


THE PASSION OF GOD 95 


all its careful selection of attributes it does not, 
from beginning to end, mention love—the word 
ofall others one would have expected, and which 
embraces all attributes. If one is exercising 
his intellect he can have no better guide than this 
definition, if his heart be tired he will find it a 
marble pillow. Why did not those learned 
divines inquire of that apostle who once laid his 
head on Jesu’s bosom, and felt the heart of God 
beat ? Suppose they had taken the words of 
St. John and written ‘‘ God is love.” Why did 
they not sit at Jesu’s feet who had lain in God’s 
bosom and revealed the Father. Suppose they 
had heard Jesus and had written ‘Our Father 
in Heaven.” Would it not have made a differ- 
ence both in many hearts and many homes if 
generation after generation of children had been 
asked ‘‘ What is God?” and learned to answer 
for their life long ‘My Heavenly Father.” 
No doubt the God of the Catechism and of 
the Gospels is one, as the mountain is one 
from its base to its summit. But the lofty 
peak is only for the trained climber, and even he 
may lose his head on the perilous ascent. It is 
wiser for ordinary people to find their resting- 


96 THE PASSION OF GOD 


place in the clefts of the rocks where the flowers are — 
blooming in theeye ofthe sun. Master thinkers 
miss their footing when they speculate on the 
Being of God, but the simplest can hide himself in 
God’s protecting love, who is perfect father and 
mother, perfect husband and friend. 

With this glimpse into the divine heart we also 
gather riches for the struggle of life, because we 
have a sympathetic God. It is hard enough in 
any case to pray unto one whom we cannot see, 
and it is beyond our power if we imagine Him 
untouched by this world’s agony, which breaks 
beneath His feet as spray upon the base of a 
cliff. How can a transcendent God understand 
us any more than we can enter into the feelings 
of an insect on which we placed our foot this 
morning ? But an immanent God, united to us 
by the Incarnation, and dwelling in us by the 
Spirit, who is affronted by every sin, wounded 
by every ill-usage, and disappointed by every 
rebuff, draws out our heart. He must feel 
because He has suffered. Behold! He also 
stretched out Hishand and no man regarded; He 
has been betrayed and put to shame in His own 
house. He carries upon Him the burden of the 


THE PASSION OF GOD 97 


world’s care and sorrow; He has had prodigal 
children, and been broken-hearted by His own 
friends ; He also has been misunderstood, perse- 
cuted, insulted. What trial of man has not also 
been the lot of God? What sorrow has not been 
tasted by God ? What sin has not been committed 
against Him ? Before we pray He has heard us, 
not only because His ear is open to our cry but 
because “‘ In all our affliction He has been afflicted, 
and so the Angel of His presence saves us.” 

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh, 

And thy Maker is not by ; 


Thinkest thou canst weep a tear 
And thy Maker is not near. 


O He gives to us His joy 
That our grief He may destroy, 
Till our grief is fled and gone 
He doth sit by us and moan. 
Outside holy scripture there has not been a 
more intimate apprehension of the fellow suffer- 
ing of God than these words of Blake. 


He doth sit by us and moan. 


LF. 9 


VIII 
JESUS’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY 


“Then Jesus beholding him loved him.’’—S?. 
Mark’s Gospel x. 21. 

HEN it is recorded in this vivid gospel, 

as by one who had seen the affection 

in the Master’s eye, that Jesus loved the young 
ruler, we ought to allow their full meaning to 
the words. Jesus was not one to mistake a 
pleasant manner for a true heart, or to bestow. 
the approval of emotion where His judgment 
condemned. He searched men as with fire, and 
called each man by his own name. If Jesus 
looked with favour upon any one and made over- 
tures of friendship to him, then be sure that 
man deserved well of the eternal law and of all 
good people. This ruler did not make the highest 
claim, nor did he trade upon false pretences. 
He did not profess religion—the passion which 
fills the soul with love unto the Deity, and moves 


one to sacrifice everything for an unseen cause. 
98 


JESUS’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY — 99 


What he professed was modest and becoming, 
that he had been an obedient son, that he had 
lived cleanly, that he had not told lies, that he 
had done his duty by his neighbour, that in short 
he had carried himself as a kindly and honourable 
gentleman. This he was, and because he was 
this Jesus loved him. And the attitude of Jesus 
to this kind.of man suggests various useful ideas, 
and is also charged with encouragement. 

Upon the face of it Jesus did not regard a 
person who is moral, but not religious, as utterly 
depraved. The depravity of such people is laid 
down in certain Church standards, and is still, 
one gathers, believed by many. “ We are,” says 
an ancient document which was deliberately 
written in England and hastily adopted in Scot- 
land, “indisposed, disabled, and made opposite 
to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.” If % 
is also asserted in the same Confession that the 


‘ 


‘works of an unregenerate man are “sinful and 
cannot please God.’ Those deliverances are 
supported by quotations from various parts of 
holy scripture, not, however, so much from the 
Gospels as from the Pentateuch. People have 


been browbeaten by those statements into words 


100 JESUS’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY 


of self-condemnation against which they have 
no corresponding experience, and which they 
would justly resent on the lips of their best 
friends. They also have taken from such teaching 
a pessimistic view of human nature, so that there 
is a striking difference between the theory of 
what their neighbours are and the working 
treatment of the same neighbours. If a person 
seriously believed such words then he would 
hold that those whom he loves, and with whom 
he lives, as well as those whom he knows abroad 
and with whom he deals, are by nature, to use 
the words of one of our most beautiful hymns, 


False and full of sin 


Really he treats them as absolutely straight- 
forward, and relies upon their integrity. Under 
the influence of this morbid theology one would 
regard his child as a son of the devil, but with 
the evidence of experience he treats him as a 
son of God. Which creates an artificial atmo- 
sphere, and prevents us getting into touch with 
reality. : 

This doctrine of humanity is first of all wrong 
in theory, for it does not explain the situation. 


JESUS’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY Iotr 


If a person be by nature absolutely corrupt, then 
there is no possibility of salvation for him. Sal- 
vation is not the creation of another being, it is 
the restoration of the present being. If the 
house be so infected that there be not in it one 
sound stone, then it must be pulled down to the 
foundation and its very material scattered. 
Nothing will remain but an empty site, and upon 
it another house may be built. If I am bad 
through and through, then my reason, my heart, 
my will are all unreliable. They must go, and 
what remains? If a man has a weak spot in 
one of his lungs he may be cured, if both lungs 
are thoroughly rotten he must die; for there is 
no sound spot from which recovery may begin. 
Granted health somewhere, then nature can 
work from that centre and drive the disease out 
in an ever expanding circle. And Jesus believed 
that in every man there was a core of goodness, 
and to it He appealed. Y 
This doctrine is also wrong because it is not 
confirmed by facts. What shall we say of the 
patriot who is not a saint but who dies for his 
country ? Is not patriotism in itself, even when 
not crowned with religion, a good thing? What 


102 JESUS’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY 


of the artisan who refuses to turn out scamped 
work, and yet who may not always live as we 
should wish him? Is not his honesty of purpose 

a good thing ? What of the merchant who is a 
sceptic but who has never failed to meet his 
obligations ? Is not integrity a good thing? 
/ What of the mother who passionately loves her 
child, but has never been converted? Is not 
love a good thing ? Are we not bound to hold 
when we face life that patriotism and honesty 
and integrity and love are absolutely good, and 
have nothing whatever to do with depravity, 
and that so far the people who produce them 
are good also. To say that people who are not 
pious are depraved is an absurdity, for we know 
that many persons who are not religious practise 
higher morals, in business especially, than some 
who are. When Jesus considered this young 
man’s life the Master loved him, and He did not 

\_ love what was not good. 

Jesus’ appreciation of the young ruler also 
reminds us that the more morality there is in 
the community, the better both for Church and 
State. One is moved to enter a humble protest 
against that indirect depreciation of morality 


JESUS’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY 103 


which consists in bidding men beware of good 
works, and warning them that it is not by such 
works they will be saved. As if the average 
man, or even the average Christian, were stagger- 
ing under the weight of his superfluous morality. 
As if any one were likely to be saved who had no 
good works. It is no use commanding men to 
lay their “‘ deadly doing down,” for there is no 
man doing too much in the way of goodness. It 
were better to warn men that the grace of God 
is wholly ineffectual and has failed with every 
man whom it has not made straight and charitable. 
It is a wholesome change in ethics from the 
modern hymns to the Old Testament Psalms ; 
it is rising from the warm enervating plain of 
Italy to the cold bracing highlands of the Enga- 
dine. Not only have the Psalms an incomparable 
majesty which no hymn except the Te Deum 
rivals, and an unaffected tenderness which no 
hymn, except perhaps “‘ Rock of Ages,” has ever 
touched, but the Psalms have also an ethical 
tone which is wanting in many popular hymns. 
If the soldier of Christ wishes to brace himself 
for strenuous living, and the discharge of daily 
duty, he can hardly find a hymn to make the 


104 JESUS’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY 


blood move in his veins. He turns with satis- 
faction to Psalm i., where the doctrine and 
the practice correspond. The man who walketh 
in the law of the Lord, that man shall stand; 
the man who does not walk in the law of the 
Lord, believe what he may or say what he please, 
will be scattered like chaff before the wind of 
Heaven. 

/ And Jesus’ treatment of this excellent young 
man suggests that one object of Jesus’ mission is 
to raise morality into spirituality. As one has 
pointed out there are four stages in the develop- 
ment of our nature—animality, intellectuality, 
morality, spirituality. Most people will allow 
that morality stands above the first two, but 
many forget that there is something higher. 
Moses brought men to the level of morality, 
Jesus led them to the level where morality 
passes into religion. Itwas not His business to 
enforce the Ten Commandments, it was His to 
replace them by the principle of love. Jesus 
does not treat the moral man as an outcast, but 
claims him as His disciple. He does not reproach 
him, He approves him and desires to reward him. 
Can a man stand before the grave of his father 


- 


JESUS’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY 105 


and mother, no doubt with many regrets, but 
yet without shame? Jesus, the Son of Mary, 
hastens to his side. He is a good son and for 
him there remains a recompense, both in this 
world and that which is to come. Has he done 
his work to the utmost of his ability? Jesus, 
the Carpenter of Nazareth, gives him His hand. 
When the fire comes and burns up the pretensions 
of hypocrites his sound doing will stand. Has 
he been a loyal husband, and a faithful father ? 
Jesus who glorified the family gives him His 
benediction, and nothing can make it void. 
This is a moral man, and he is ranking very high/ i 
But something still is wanting, and Jesus would 
fain supply it. The Master desires to take that 
love which gathers round wife and child and 
raise it till it consciously touches God. He 
wants to take that work which has been so true 
and thorough, and change it into the direct 
service of God. He wants to add our Father’s 
House to the earthly home, and open the vistas 
of immortality. Jesus has not come to take 
anything away ; He has come to raise everything 
to the highest levelso that the man may stand, not 
only on the height of his intellect and of his 


106 JESUS’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY 


conscience, but of his soul, where he can see the 
Land of Promise. Morality is like the clean and 
well chiselled marble of the ancient story, beauti- 
ful, but cold. | When the Spirit of Jesus touches 
it the stone reddens and lives. Religion is 
morality touched with emotion, till, instead of 
duty we speak of love, and to the treasure of a 
good conscience and an honourable life are added 
the peace which passeth all understanding, the 
joy unspeakable and full of glory and that vision 
of God which in itself is life everlasting. 

It was not in vain that the young ruler kept 
the Commandments; it was because he kept 
them that Jesus loved him. It is not in vain 
that any man has lived bravely outside religion, 
it is because he has done so well that Jesus desires 
to have him for a disciple. No faithfulness of 
service in any province of life, and no ministry 
of charity, have passed unnoticed by Him who 
alone understands human nature, and who is our 
Judge. Our Lord has a welcome for all men 
who will come to Him, even the thief upon the 
cross; but of only one seeker in the Gospels is 
it written that Jesus loved him. He was not a 
reprobate, nor was he a Pharisee, he was a well 


JESUS’ APPRECIATION OF MORALITY 107 


living and high minded man. If he had been 
able to make the last sacrifice then one dares to 
think the young ruler would have become a chief 
apostle, and the rival of St. Paul. When, there- 
fore, one like the young ruler approaches Jesus, 
the Master sees a man after His own heart. 
When such a one refuses the cross which alone 
can raise him to his full manhood the Master is 
bitterly disappointed. And that man _ suffers 
the chief loss of life. 


IX 
CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 
“Herod set Jesus at nought.””—St. Luke xxiii. 11. 


HEN the tide of circumstances flung 
Herod and Jesus together for a brief 
hour, one has an illustration of the inexhaustible 
irony of history. The world has not afforded 
another contrast so vivid and arresting. It 
was a sudden collision of extreme moral oppo- 
sites which first arrests the imagination and 
then searches the soul. We are always inter- 
ested when the East meets the West, wondering 
what the aliens will think of one another, what 
they will say, what they will do, and what will 
be the result of the incongruous meeting. And 
by an irresponsible action of Pontius Pilate, 
anxious on any terms to get rid of Jesus, the 
Master was brought to Herod’s palace, and stood 
before him a helpless prisoner. 
Christ and Herod could not be called entire 


strangers. They had been living in the same 
108 


CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 109 


province as public men for more than two years, 
—one as a prophet of God, the other as his king. 
For it is worth remembering, if only for the grim 
humour of human affairs that Herod Antipas 
was our Lord’s titular monarch. Each had 
been moving in his own orbit, and fulfilling the 
bias of his own nature. Jesus had been so- 
journing in the villages of Galilee and working 
among the poor folk He loved. Herod had been 
feasting in his gorgeous palace on the Lake of 
Galilee, or in the castle where he held John Bap- 
tist prisoner.’ As people may live in the same 
district and have nothing to do with one another, 
so Herod and Jesus were contemporaries in Gali- 
lee, and so far as we know never met, because 
one was in the higher circle of society, and 
the other was in the lower. Of course they 
had heard of each other in their different spheres, 
and they had spoken of each other in the_hear- 
ing of the people. Herod listened with troubled 
ear to weird reports of Jesus’ words and de- 
clared with a thrill of superstition that He must 
be the ghost of John Baptist. Jesus on His 
part was warned to beware of Herod, and for 
once in His life spoke of a man not with hot 


IIo CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS. 


anger, but with utter contempt. “Tell that 
fox,” He said, and “fox” sounds strangely 
on Jesus’ lips. The Master had been often 
indignant both with friends and with foes, but 
this was worse that heat. Better far that Christ 
should turn upon one as He did on Simon Peter, 
and say, ‘‘ Get thee behind Me, Satan,” than to 
call him a fox. The prince thinks of the prophet 
as the revengeful spirit of his victim, raised to 
trouble him. The prophet dismisses the prince 
from His thoughts, with this scornful by word 
as moral vermin. Between these two there is 
a spiritual repulsion which could never be over- 
come, and now Christ stands bound before 
Herod and his petty court. The Master is at 
the mercy of the fox. It is an absolute reversal 
of everything that is fitting. Christ as subject 
and prisoner, Herod Antipas as Tetrarch and 
Judge. 

Consider for an instant the two figures which 
are beneath one roof, and in such a mad relation 
to one another. This princeling who set Jesus 
at nought was as miserable a creature as could 
be found if you had searched the world over. 
He belonged to the evil Idumean house, and 


CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS III 


was the son of that Herod who slew the children 
of Bethlehem ; he was the cesspool of his race, 
and into him had poured all their iniquity with 
little of their capacity. Antipas was a libertine, 
a tyrant, a coward, and a sycophant. There 
was not in him a hint of goodness, save his early 
slavish respect for John Baptist, which was not 
however so strong as his vices. There was no 
place in his heart where a noble thought could 
lodge; there was no conscience left to which 
a successful appeal could be made. That was 
Herod—and what of Christ ? We all know ; there 
is no need for description, nor opportunity for 
controversy. Sometimes acritic, bereft of spirit- 
ual sanity, or intoxicated with the cant of un- 
belief, will pretend to detect flaws in the char- 
acter of Christ. But he is left unanswered, 
with the people who argue that the world is flat, 
or that Bacon wrote Shakespeare; or that Jeffries 
was a just judge, or that the Borgias have been 
much misunderstood. The world may have 
difficulties about Christianity, but it has made 
up its mind about Christ. Whether He be God 
or not, He is at least the bright and perfect 
excellency of humanity. No, history has never 


I12 CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS - 


done anything so ironical as when it set Herod 
to judge Christ. 

Could you imagine Herod, being what he was, 
doing anything else than mock Jesus? Had 
Jesus still possessed the suffrages of the fickle 
mob, and the air been still sounding with Ho- 
sannah instead of Crucify, Herod had never set 
Jesus at nought. Had Jesus been a high priest, 
holding aristocratic office, and representing a 
powerful tradition; had He been a Roman 
officer with the power of Caesar behind him; 
had Jesus been the rich man of Christ’s parable, 
building larger barns every year; had He even 
been a famous Scribe with authority among the 
mob of Jerusalem; had He been Caiaphas, or 
Pontius Pilate, or Joseph of Arimathea, Herod 
had given Him respect, at least from the teeth. 
Had Jesus even complied with his insolent 
desire, and performed miracles to amuse him and 
his courtiers, Herod had either crouched in 
terror at the signs of power, or been vastly 
amused as by the tricks of aconjuror. But Jesus 
friendless, powerless, silent, how could the Tet- 
rarch appreciate Him? You must go by what 
you know, and what you respect, and Herod 


CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 113 


appraised Jesus by the only standard of his com- 
mand, the standard of the world. What has 
he got? Votes? Ah! me, none now. They 
have all turned, save a faithful few, to the other 
side. Rank? He was a carpenter, and now He 
is a prophet. Riches? Not enough to buy a 
grave. Do you say goodness? Yes, He has 
goodness, like that of God Himself. Is that all? 
Do you expect Antipas to take goodness ser- 
iously ? There are men to whom the most radiant 
goodness, uninvested with substantial glory, 
is a fourth dimension—something which you 
may argue exists, but which they can never 
realize. The idea that a man without a far- 
thing, without a friend, who has no position in 
society, who has failed in his enterprise, may 
yet be great through character, was quite 
beyond the range of Herod’s vision. No! Jesus 
was simply a man who had made some noise, 
and tried His hand at being a prophet, and missed 
His chance, and had come to grief. He was a 
negligible quantity who could be treated as any- 
body pleased. There had been a faint anxiety 
in Herod’s mind lest Jesus should have some 
magical power, and become troublesome. It 
LF. 8 


II4 CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 


was clear now that Hehad none, for if He had, of 
course He would have used it to please Herod, and 
secure His own safety. Herod had beheaded 
John Baptist with some misgivings; He had 
been uneasy about Jesus, but his mind was now 
relieved. If Jesus ever had been a force He 
was a spent force—He could not strike back. 
And Herod could insult Him with safety. Jesus 
had called Herod ‘‘ fox”; well, time brings its 
revenge, and Jesus was now in the fox’s power. 
We can create the scene, the jibes of Herod, the 
laughter of his satellites, the poor humour of the 
gorgeous robe. It was not kingly, it was not 
manly, but it was natural—it was Herod. When 
the court had been satiated with amusement 
they sent Jesus back to Pilate. 

This kind of scene is very exasperating, and 
one does not willingly look upon it. But may 
it not be a picture, magnified to heroic size, 
and flung upon the screen of sacred history, of 
what has always been going on, and is going 
on still? Does the suspicion never cross one’s 
mind that he may be doing ina more decent way 
what this princeling did after his fashion long 
ago? Is our vision so keen that we have never 


CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 115 
missed the beautiful when it was before our eyes ? 
Is our judgment so perfect that it has never 
gone astray? Have we made no mistakes in 
the depreciation of goodness, and the admira- 
tion of badness? One can neither study his- 
tory nor contemporary life without discovering 
that the average man has never been tardier 
than in the recognition of moral greatness, when 
it happened to be separate from rank, and power, 
and numbers and success. Never more foolish 
than in despising the lovely but helpless great- 
ness of some lonely soul. We speak compara- 
tively, of course, for we can find no other Christ, 
only reflections of Him; we can hardly pro- 
duce another Herod, we must take in his stead 
respectable people. And perhaps the irony is 
subtler when this kind of Herod sets some 
humbler Christ at nought. 

Can one find, for instance, any worse sinner 
than that historical body which ought to have 
the keenest appreciation of goodness and extend 
to it the quickest recognition—I mean the Church 
of Jesus Christ. Hundreds of times during the 
nineteen centuries since our Lord was insulted 
by Herod have men, spotless in their lives, and 


116 CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 


famous for their works, stood before tribunals 
to be cruelly and unjustly judged. For what ? 
Because they refused to say what they could 
not understand, or what they ‘believed to be 
false. Did it help any of them in that hour that 
they were holy men? Not one whit. It made 
their judges more anxious to condemn them, 
and an ecclesiastical court trying a man for heresy 
is the only court that will refuse a testimony to 
character as irrelevant. Yet if it be anything 
it is a moral court, and if it knows anything it 
ought to understand that spiritual knowledge 
is conditional upon holy living. Did it matter 
that in many cases the judges presiding over 
such courts and dealing with such men were not 
beyond reproach ? Not in the slightest. When 
the unworthy judge sent the good man to death, 
rarely any one cried shame. John Huss came 
to the Council of Constance with a safe conduct, 
and was burnt, but a little later the Borgias 
reigned in Rome. The Society of Friends, the 


most Christlike of all religious bodies, was per- _ 


secuted for years in England, and evil living 
ministers left untouched. McLeod Campbell, 
one of the most saintly ministers of the Scots 


re 


CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 117 


Kirk, was cast out by an almost unanimous vote 
of the chief court because he gave Christ’s love 
too wide a range, but as a moderate drunkard 
in the former half of last century he had been 
perfectly safe. Have we finally learned that 
it is far more important that a man live like 
Jesus than think with us, and do we to-day 
recognize holiness of character as a finer test 
than correctness of opinion ? 

Pass from the Church to the State and com- 
pare two types of men which appeal for our 
suffrages and support. One is smart, shrewd, 
unscrupulous and time serving, who will suit his 
views to the day, will conciliate every dangerous 
interest, will seize every opportunity of harass- 
ing his opponents, and will make a gain for his 
party out of the welfare of the State. We know - 
quite well that he is morally a low-class man. 
The other is earnest, thoughtful, high-minded, 
and honourable, who will say what he believes 
to be true, and do what he thinks to be right, 
who has no private ends to serve, who will sac- 
rifice everything for the good of the common- 
wealth. We know quite well that he is mor- 
ally a high-class man. The one is clever, so 


118 CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 


clever that we chuckle over his adroitness, as 
if he were a thimble-rigger. The other is good, 
so good that we are uncomfortable with him, as 
if he were a saint. Which will more likely gain 
the ear of average people ? Will cleverness be 
condemned because the-man is worthless? Will 
goodness be approved, though it be not showy ? 
Is not unscrupulous cleverness admired and 
rewarded if the man be a partisan? Is not 
self-sacrificing and capable goodness depreciated 
and rejected because the man refuses to be the tool 
of a party or the instrument of shady interests ? 
And is not this the contempt of goodness ? 
Are we not committing the same lamentable 
mistake in private society? By our side people 
are living gloriously, but their excellence is 
that of the Kingdom of God—faith and patience, 
sacrifice and purity. They are refusing ease, 
they are disdaining mean work, they are sink- 
ing themselves, they are toiling for no seen 
reward. It may be a wife or a husband, or a 
friend or a fellow labourer, and our eyes have 
been holden, while all the time we are vastly 
impressed by people who are bright, and witty, 
and handsome, and fashionable. We wish to 


CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS II9 


be like them; we make disparaging comparisons 
between them and the bearers of Christ’s cross. 
Fools that we are, to live day by day beside 
this heavenly beauty, and to hanker after the 
tinsel of worldly character. The day may come 
when we shall wake to realize our loss, when the 
light fades from our home, and the Christ by 
our side is taken. We shall understand then 
what we have belittled, and how we have sinned. 

No one can exaggerate the calamity of this 
contempt ; it is a sin against the Holy Ghost. 
Where could Herod find that day the most con- 
vincing revelation of the Almighty? Not in 
the Temple of Jerusalem, with its splendid 
buildings and hallowed memory, for its min- 
isters were unbelieving priests. Nor in the 
synagogue, with all the reading of the prophets 
and the preaching of the law, for there fanatics 
were wrangling about vain doctrines. The 
’ dwelling place of God that day was a man 
clothed in poor garments, and rejected by all. 
There was in Jesus more of God than could be 
found in a whole world, and He was set at nought. 
How unconscious we are of our worst errors, 
and of our spiritual disasters. Herod, profane 


120 CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 


as he was, would have thought it dreadful to 
have rifled the Temple, and carried away the 
sacred vessels, to have used the veil of the 
holiest of all for a curtain in his banqueting 
chamber, and to have set the golden candle- 
sticks among his wine cups. But that would 
have been a trifling sin beside this fearful sac- 
rilege of insulting Jesus. 

We all have our ideas of reverence and would 
not lightly outrage them. We bare our heads in 
a church, because God meets His people there, 
we treat the Bible differently from other books, 
because God in a special sense speaks there. So 
much we do for a house and for a book, and we 
make little of those in whom God is living, 


Who are fulfilled of Godhead as a cup 
Filled with a precious essence. 


Be sure there is no revelation of God so near, 
and so clear, none which can do so much for us, 
or which lays on us such a responsibility, as 
the character of good people. It is visible, 
active, flesh and blood goodness, the very incar- 
nation of the divine grace. You remember 
how in Browning’s Christmas Eve the super- 


CONTEMPT OF GOODNESS 121 


cilious visitor found that God had been among 
the poor chapel folk, and how God was leaving 
him because he had despised them. 

No face; only the sight 

Of a sweeping garment, vast and white, 

With a hem that I could recognize. 
To have the hem of Christ’s “ sweeping garment ”’ 
touch us, and then to fling it aside with con- 
tempt, because it comes in the shape of ordinary 
people, is not only one of the master sins, but 
also one of the irreparable losses of life. 


Xx 
WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND 


“ And be not conformed to this world.’”,—Romans xii. 2. 


S “world” has various meanings in Holy 
is an ambiguous 


‘ > 


Scripture ‘‘ worldliness ’ 
word, and we must understand what is intended 
by the world against which the apostle warned 
those Roman Christians, and whichthroughout the 
apostolic writings is regarded as the enemy of the 
soul. Sometimes world means the earth, which 
is the home of the race, and sometimes it means 
the race itself. It goes without saying that none 
of us should look askance on this fair creation as 
if it were a snare for the soul, or restrain our 
affection for our brethren as if there lurked a subtle 
danger in human love. When an ascetic went 
forth to fulfil his vocation without bidding his 
mother good-bye, and when he walked the livelong 
day by the Lake of Geneva and never looked upon 
its beauty, he neither gained any merit of self- 


denial nor conquered any sin. He despised the 
122 


WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND 123 


love of home and the works of his Heavenly 
Father, and closing his eyes to one innocent world 
outside his soul he set up another of spiritual pride 
within. For the artificial religion which regards 
natural affection and physical beauty with 
suspicion there is no sanction in the teaching of 
our Master, who amid the agonies of the cross 
bethought Him of His mother, and to whom nature 
was an endless delight. It is a morose fanaticism 
which would confound love with idolatry; it is 
an unredeemed barbarism which mutilated the 
statues on the Acropolis, and the cathedrals of 
our own land. The physical world Jesus used as 
a parable of spiritual things, and for the world of 
men He laid down His life. As often as religion is 
hostile either to loveliness or to love, it is not to 
be praised for unworldliness, but to be condemned 
for ignorance, which understands neither the 
works of the Lord nor the sympathy of His heart. 

It was of another world Jesus was thinking 
when He said in His last discourse, ‘‘ Be of good 
cheer, I have overcome the world,” and of which 
St. John wrote, “‘ Love not the world, neither the 
things that are in the world.” Before His mind 
was that Jewish generation which from the be- 


124 WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND 


ginning had suspected Him, and which in the end 
came to hate Him, with its vain traditions, its 
hollow conventions, its overweening self-righteous- 
ness, its hatred of foreign nations, and its indiffer- 
ence to brotherly love. This world had its own 
attraction and power ; it could enrich and honour, 
or it could persecute and destroy a man. And 
the temptation which beset Christ’s disciples was 
to come to termswith their world, to repeat its acts, 
to accept its ideals, to further its ends. Once this 
world cast for a moment its tangling net round 
Simon Peter, and the apostle besought his Lord 
to avoid the cross. And the same influence led 
Judas Iscariot captive, when for thirty pieces of 
silver he sold his friend, and gaining as it seemed 
at one stroke the whole world lost himself for ever. 

When St. Paul lifted up his voice against the 
world, and besought the Christians committed to 
his charge to be separate from it, he was thinking 
of that imposing paganism which was ever 
fronting them. With its love of pleasure, its 
glorification of power, its imperial pageantry, its 
idolatrous temples, its unredeemed Art, its 
seduction both for the senses and for the intellect, 
paganism cast its glamour over the new Christian 


WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND 125 


converts. Writers so far apart as Cardinal New- 
man in his Callista and the author of Quo Vadis 
suggest to our minds the fascinating atmosphere 
into which Christianity was born, and where in 
its youth it had to fight the good fight of faith. 
Beneath the beauty of form and colour, the 
magnificence of ceremonies and arms, the arts and 
riches of civilization, that was an unclean and 
leprous world. Whether they lived in Corinth, 
with its unblushing worship of lust, or in Rome, 
which was the moral sewer of the world, or in 
Ephesus, where Christians were tempted by the 
deeds of the Nicolaitanes, or in Pergamos, where 
there were those who held the abominable doc- 
trine of Balaam, or in Thyatira, where Jezebel 
seduced God’s servants, or in Sardis, where only a 
few had not defiled their garments, Christians had 
ever to stand on guard. No wonder that some in 
Corinth had fallen through the lures of the flesh, 
or that a Demas had forsaken the faith before 
that imperial magnificence. Christians had to 
choose between their Lord and their world, and it 
was a world hard to escape or to resist. 

It is evident that the world of to-day has 
changed, and it is unreasonable to require of 


126 WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND 


modern Christians the line of action which was 
necessary in the first century. The spirit of 
Christ has counted for something during nineteen 
centuries, and Western society is not arrayed in 
arrogant hostility to the claims and ethics of our 
Master. His disciples are neither persecuted nor 
seduced after the fashion of the former days, and 
it is not necessary to preach that separation which 
once was compulsory, nor to warn against the 
gross temptations which once beset the disciple 
from street and temple, from book and Art. 
Religious writers have shown a want of historical 
insight in adopting those fiery denunciations of 
the world which applied to the Corinth of St. Paul 
and the Rome of Juvenal. This does not mean 
that there is no anti-Christian world or that 
Christians have not need to watch and pray; it 
only means that war has changed its form, and 
instead of the clash of swords we have the unseen 
danger of the rifle. We have to get to the prin- 
ciple which underlies all forms, and what con- ° 
stitutes the world in every age is devotion to the 
material instead of to the spiritual. It is the over- 
weening appreciation of pleasure, rank, riches, 
learning, and Art. If any one values silver and 


WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND 127 


gold more than character, or loses his self-respect 
before persons of high station, or assigns duty a 
second place to ease, or is more concerned about 
the opinion of men than the judgmént of con- 
science, or is better pleased by the triumph of a 
party than the reign of righteousness, or is satis- 
fied with Art which has no high purpose, to whom 
in short the things which pass are more than the 
things which remain, you see the power of this 
world, and a worldly man. 

Worldliness in essence consists not in certain 
acts of the outer life but in a certain temper of 
mind. A woman need not be worldly because 
she dresses well, and has an engaging manner, and 
is popular in society, for in this case there would 
be nothing so worldly as a flower ; and it does not 
follow that a man is worldly because he is success- 
ful in business, or obtains high office, or is praised 
by his fellows, for this were a reflection on capa- 
city, enterprise, and good-humour. Unworldliness 
must not be identified with a squalid appearance, 
a forbidding countenance, slackness of work, or 
Pharisaism of tone. It does not prove worldliness 
to play games, to read fiction, to enjoy sport ; it 
is not more worldly to play billiards than bowls, 


128 WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND 


to take a hand at whist than to talk scandal, for 
young people to dance rather than join in the 
silly games which used to be a substitute for 
dancing, or to take a walk on Sunday rather than 
to sleep at home. Worldliness has been too much 
defined by artificial observances and conventional 
tests, so that a person was counted unworldly not 
on account of his likeness in character to Christ, 
but because he did not do certain things which the 
religious party of his day disapproved. 
Worldliness is a tricky and capricious spirit 
which disappoints and surprises by its dwelling 
places. When the Church of Christ chooses men 
for office, not on account of their spirituality, but 
of their possessions, or when a man is placed in the 
chair at a religious conference, not for his capacity, 
but for his title, or when the success of the ministry 
is estimated by statistics of seat-holders and of 
money, or when the officers of Christ’s Church 
make bargains with politicians, or when an aged 
Christian on whom the world to come is already 
_ breaking babbles about his investments, or when 
some pious woman who often laments the decay of 
religion, complains of a social slight, then you see 
worldliness in its most dangerous form, making 


WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND 129 


itself at home in the very sanctuary of God. When 
on the other hand you see a woman giving her 
husband to death in the service of his country, or 
a man of science living in bare simplicity that he 
may pursue his discoveries, or a writer scorning 
to fall beneath his ideal for the sake of gain, or a 
teacher declaring an unpopular opinion for the love 
of truth, or a person in society showing special 
courtesy to people of humbler rank or plainer 
appearance, or a working man sacrificing his own 
interest for the benefit of his less gifted fellows, 
you have the satisfaction of recognizing unworld- 
liness where you were not prepared to find it. It 
may be safely said that worldliness has never had 
a more instructive illustration than in ecclesiastics, 
’ and unworldliness a more convincing illustration 
than in men of science. 

That worldliness which seems consistent with 
the most rigid orthodoxy, and that unworldliness 
which has sometimes risen to its height in the 
atmosphere of reverent agnosticism, can be studied 
in two characteristic biographies of our own time. 
One is that of a late Bishop of Oxford, a man of 
honourable family, large social influence, most 
brilliant gifts, and undeniable personal piety, and 

LF. 9 


130 WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND 


the other is the life of the pioneer of natural science 
in our day, and one of the most patient lovers of 
knowledge of any day, Charles Darwin. The 
former was not only, as we fully acknowledge, a 
devout private Christian, but also a high ruler in 
the Christian Church, yet he divided the energy 
of his public life between two ends, toiling in the 
service of the Church, and scheming for his own 
advancement. When he was not defending the 
Christian creed he was canvassing for promotion, 
and how to reconcile the piety and the intriguing 
passes one’s imagination. The latter was an 
agnostic who with sad honesty found himself 
unable to accept the Christian faith, and who con- 
secrated to science his strength and his means. 
He was a man without greed of wealth, indifferent 
to public honour, patient of criticism, ready to 
admire every successful worker, and maintaining 
a hospitable mind for truth from any quarter, a 
modest, pure-living, retiring, self-forgetful student. 
The ecclesiastic represents the type of worldliness 
tinged with religion, the naturalist the type of 
unworldliness with no conscious aid from religion. 
And the climax of the contrast was reached when 
at a meeting of a British association at Oxford the 


WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND 131 


eloquent Bishop denounced Darwin and his views 
with, as has been said “ inimitable spirit, empti- 
ness and unfairness.” He finally allowed himself to 
ask Huxley whether he was related on his grand- 
father’s or his grandmother’s side to an ape, and 
Mr. Huxley replied—“‘If there were an ancestor, sir, 
whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would be 
a man of restless and versatile intellect who, not 
content with an equivocal success in his own sphere 
of activity, plunges into scientific questions with 
which he has no real acquaintance, only to ob- 
scure them by an aimless rhetoric and distract . 
the attention of his hearers from the real point 
by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to 
religious prejudice.” 

The audacity of worldliness, which settles within 
the province of faith itself, and the subtlety which 
is Proteus-like in its disguises, warns Christians to 
judge themselves with care and severity. If our 
Master did anything, He founded a society whose 
standard was to be character, and whose ends 
were to be spiritual, in which the things which are 
true and beautiful, and gentle and gracious are to 
be counted the chief good. Was it worth His dying 
if the brotherhood of Galilee should become a huge 


132 WORLDLINESS: A FRAME OF MIND. 


trust, quarrelling over property, tyrannizing over 
men’s consciences, giving precedence to the rich 
over the poor, and rivalling the rulers of this world 
in its cunning? Was it any use His calling men, 
and inviting them to carry His cross, if the only 
difference between the disciples of Christ and the 
children of this world be the profession of a creed 
which is divorced from obedience, and the practise 
of a Pharisaic holiness which stands rather in the 
washing of hands and the titheing of mint, than 
in a clean heart and the service of men. 


XI 


PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE THE CONDITION 
OF SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE 
“ Tf any man will do His, will he shall know of the 
doctrine.” —S#. John vii. 17. 
T is startling to notice the class in the Jewish 
nation which was most perplexed by Jesus’ 
teaching and the class which entered most kindly 
into His mind. As it happened, there was one 
audience which by its intellectual culture, its 
minute Biblical knowledge, its religious traditions, 
and its Church instincts, seemed to have been 
specially prepared for Jesus. And it also hap- 
pened that He had another audience which, by 
its want of education, its ignorance of theology, 
its exclusion from the religious circle, and the 
burden of daily labour seemed to be incapacitated 
to receive His spiritual message. One would 
have predicted that the Scribes and Pharisees 
would have had an easy mastery of Jesus’ doc- 


trine, and that the common people would have 
133 


134 PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 


found it a foreign language; but it was the 
experts with all their advantages who failed, and 
the unlearned who succeeded in this new school. 
Although we are so accustomed to the Gospels, 
there are still times when one is utterly perplexed, 
because the religious circle of Jesus’ day had 
not the remotest idea that He was the long- 
expected Messiah, or even that He wasa perfectly 
convincing teacher of religion, but came to the 
conclusion that He was a dangerous heretic 
and a destroyer of faith. And one is also per- 
plexed that the outside circle who were despised 
by the Pharisees and talked down to, just as 
outside people are judged and preached to by 
the religious circle to-day, should have responded 
to Jesus so quickly, and should have given Him 
such satisfaction. It was as if the recognized 
religious class of our day who address meetings, 
and ask people if they are converted, and talk of 
their neighbours as worldly, and are very keen 
about certain doctrines, should have denounced 
Jesus and persecuted Him when He came with 
His Sermon on the Mount, and His parables of the 
divine love, while a large number of quiet people 
who have never made any profession and have 


PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 135 


never dared to consider themselves religious 
should have deeply appreciated Jesus and have 
become His faithful disciples. If you imagine 
this state of things you will understand how 
perplexing the situation is and must always be 
until we get its key. 

Jesus Himself was not surprised, but declared 
that while there was no obstacle to the people 
understanding His doctrine,the Pharisees laboured 
under a hopeless disability. They considered 
it enough to judge Christ’s words by the intellect, 
and did not feel it necessary to obey them in 
life, while the people who made no pretensions 
to expert knowledge forsook their sins, and so 
qualified themselves to receive Jesus’ teaching. 
It was a question of method—how to understand 
—and since the Pharisees clung to their arid 
theology they made no progress, whilst the others 
accepted the ethics of Jesus andsoattained. The 
Pharisees, notwithstanding their knowledge, which 
is not to be despised, failed to understand the 
evangel of Jesus, because, as He used to insist, 
they had the wrong temper of life. They re- 
ceived honour of men, contending for chief seats 
in the synagogue and upper places at feasts, 


136 PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 


making much of traditional doctrine and social 
customs, being self-righteous about themselves 
and censorious about other people. The people, 
notwithstanding their ignorance, which is never 
to be made light of, received Christ’s Gospel, 
because they had a humble idea of themselves, 
were penitent about their sins, did not stand at 
the corner of the streets offering public prayer, 
were anxious to do better and were willing to keep 
Christ’s commandments. The Pharisees would 
not obey and so they could not know, the people 
did obey and so they came to know. It was a 
question of moral not intellectual disability ; 
or, in other words, right living is the road in the 
spiritual world to true thinking. 

As this is a very grave principle and has a 
most searching application, we ought to fix in our 
minds what exactly Jesus intended by His words 
when He speaks of knowing the doctrine and 
doing the will. By true thinking He does not 
mean being acquainted with the various dogmas 
which scientific religion has from time to time 
created and into whose mould the fluid idea 
concerning spiritual truth has been run. Dogmas 
are the achievement of the intellect, and the 


PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 137 


Pharisees were exceedingly strong in their dog- 
matic knowledge. When Jesus speaks of doc- 
trine He is referring to the burden of His own 
teaching, and the sum of all His teaching was 
God. His aim was to impress the mind with a 
certain idea of God, and it was a moral rather 
than an intellectual conception. You do not 
find Jesus enlarging upon the existence and 
attributes of God after the manner, say, of the 
Athanasian Creed. He said nothing about the 
being of God, but He endeavoured to convince 
men that God was the merciful and faithful 
Father of the human race ; that He loved men, 
both good and bad, with a patient fatherly love ; 
that He desired His children to abandon their 
sins and come home to His fellowship ; that He 
was ready to receive them if they would only 
trust and obey Him. This was not theology, it 
was religion. It was not God’s being but God’s 
doing that Jesus preached, not His nature but His 
character. He desired not that men should solve 
problems about God, but that they should have 
fellowship with Him. No man, however learned, 
will ever be able to comprehend God: no man, 
however ignorant, if he has begun to obey in all 


138 PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 


sincerity may not have a true knowledge of 
God. : 

Again, when Jesus lays down this condition of 
obedience He speaks with careful and charitable 
qualification. He does not say that before a 
man can know God he must be able to do God’s 
will, for this were to dash our hopes to the ground. 
No one has ever been able to do God’s will per- 
fectly, save Jesus Himself, just as He alone has 
had a perfect knowledge of God. What Jesus 
asks is that a man desire to do God’s will, that he 
be not tricky or insincere like the Pharisees, 
playing false with God and with his own con- 
science in the matter of duty, but that wherever 
he sees the path before him he strive to walk 
therein. As one hassaid, “ It is not the finding out 
what God desires to be done which is difficult, 
it is the doing it.”” Our conscience in nine cases 
out of ten tells us what to do as clearly as if a 
voice spoke from Heaven, and in the tenth case 
light would arise to the righteous. The Pharisees, 
for instance, were perfectly aware that they had 
not done their duty by the people; that was 
one reason why they were angry with Jesus, and 
why they were alienated from God. Their pro- 


PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 139 


fessions were enormous towards God and insolent 
towards men; their practice was very faulty 
towards both. If we hear our conscience and 
set our face to duty, it will be with us as with the 
traveller who ascends the Gemmi Pass. When 
he comes to the foot of the precipice along whose 
ledges and through whose crevices the narrow 
path ascends, the mist may be lying heavy, and 
at first he may not find the starting point. Once 
his feet are upon the path, although he cannot see 
beyond a few yards and has no idea how the path 
may wind it is only a matter of dogged and 
careful perseverance. With every step the mist 
grows more luminous, glimpses of the crest can 
now and again be caught, and suddenly the 
traveller comes out from the cloud into the clear 
sunlight on the height, with the spotless snow 
around him and the blue of God’s heaven over 
his head. He that wills to do God’s will shall 
come to know God’s will before set of sun. 
It were difficult to mention a more dangerous 
fallacy in the religious world than that which 
separates life from truth, and supposes that a 
person may know without doing or do without 
knowing. And few of us have escaped its con- 


140 PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 


tagion. We have made a distinction like that 
which obtains in physical science, where one 
department deals with the principles of mathe- 
matics, and another applies those principles to the 
forces of nature. We imagine that there may be 
two spheres in religion, one of pure and the other 
of applied truth. So we speak of a person who 
knows the truth well without practising it, and 
of another who lives excellently but who is ignor- 
ant of the truth. If this were really so it would 
be an awful calamity, for what could be more 
injurious to himself than for one to enshrine the 
knowledge of God in the unholy place of a wicked 
life, or anything more cruel than for one to be 
bravely doing his duty and yet to be left in the 
outer darkness regarding God. As a matter of 
fact either position is a moral contradiction. 
No doubt it is as easy for a selfish man to learn his 
Catechism as to learn Euclid, but this is neither 


_ to know God nor to be saved. It is also possible 


| for one to keep the commandments of Jesus and 


om 


yet not hold the Christian dogma, but it does not 
follow that he does not know God. It is repulsive 
to the moral sense to believe that one who is not 
keeping Christ’s law can have Christ’s revelation 


PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE I4I 


of the Father, or that one who carries Christ’s 
cross can miss the light of His Father’s face? 

Christ’s deliverance, that you must obey in 
order to know, is in keeping with His idea of 
faith. Faith with Jesus was a moral word, and 
had to do with the will. It meant trust, surrender, 
loyalty, service; it meant “‘ follow Me,” and by 
following Me know My Father. Our Master 
believed that there was in every man a faculty 
of divine knowledge, which may be called the 
moral sense, and to this faculty Jesus appealed. 
He did not disparage reason, but as a religious 
teacher He did not desire to place on reason a 
burden it could not bear. God is not reason but 
love, and it is therefore as impossible for reason 
to know God as to see a picture with your ear. 
We would not allow ourselves to say God is able— 
it is profanity ; we gladly say He is kind—it is 
piety. Reason has her own province, the acquisi- 
tion of intellectual knowledge ; the moral sense 
has her province, the acquisition of spiritual 
knowledge. As one has said, “‘ In things secular 
we must know in order to love, in things spiritual 
> which means 
that the knowledge of God comes through 


we must love in order to know,’ 


142 PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 


fellowship of character. As a pool reflects the 
sun in its bosom, so is God revealed in the 
mirror of our soul. Just as the moral sense is 
bright shall we see God, just as it is dark shall 
we miss the heavenly vision. It will not help 
us that we be clever if we be proud, it will not 
hinder us that we be simple if we be humble. 

There are two people whom Jesus’ words ought 
to warn, and the first is the man who supposes 
that he knows the doctrine, but is not doing the 
will. Is he sure that he knows anything which 
counts when his knowledge is so absolutely 
divorced from life? Hehas a very strong theory 
about the inspiration of the Bible, but what good 
is his devotion to the letter when the spirit of the 
Book has not affected his heart ? He believes that 
he knows God, but how can he, for God is love, 
and this man is not loving his brother? He is 
very keen about the deity of Christ, but what 
right has he to speak of Christ since he will not 
carry Christ’s cross in mercy and humility. He 
is convinced that his sins are forgiven, and prates 
about assurance, but can they be loosed if he 
will not give quittance to his brotherman.? He 
has an unfaltering confidence that he will reach 


PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 143 


Heaven when he dies, but what place can he 
have in Heaven who to-day is carrying a hell 
of unclean or malignant passions in his heart ? 
The other person is one who is proud of his 
scepticism, and complains that he cannot know, 
while all the time he is refusing to obey. Granted 
that the Holy Trinity and the Sacrifice of Christ 
are mysteries, and that God Himself is the 
chief mystery of all, he ought to remember 
that everything in life is not a mystery. It is’ 
open to us all to do our daily work with a single 
mind, to be patient amid the reverses of life, to be 
thoughtful in the discharge of our family duties, 
and to be self-denying in the management of our 
souls. Duty at any rate is no mystery, and it is 
grotesque that a man should proclaim that he 
cannot believe the most profound truths when 
he is making no honest effort to keep the plainest 
commandments. It has been my lot to hear a 
young man explain that he could no longer be a 
Christian because he had been reading Herbert 
Spencer, and to urge him to lay Spencer on the 
shelf and to try to be a better son to his widowed 
mother. Till he was a faithful son one paid no 
attention either to what he did or what he didn’t 


144 PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 


believe about God, any more than to what one 
tells you about the stars who is looking through 
a blind telescope. And it has been my satisfaction 
to receive a letter from a woman who has had a 
hard battle to believe, saying, ““I have come to 
the conclusion that work is the panacea for a 
multitude of evils. I have nowno time for brood- 
ing over unfathomable mysteries. The sorrows 
and the sufferings here (she is nurse in a great 
London hospital) are stimulating rather than 
depressing, being so much material for work, and 
one forgets self entirely through the long day.” 

Jesus’ word has great comfort for two people, 
and the first is the man who is harassed by many 
perplexing questions but who is doing his duty 
bravely. Courage, I dare to say to you, and 
patience. Noone ever carried Christ’s cross with- 
out coming near to Christ Himself, and where 
Christ is, the light is sure to break. No sacrifice you 
make, no service you render, but is bringing you 
nearer to the heart of things, for the heart of the 
universe is love. Watch as those who watch for 
the morning, and watch at your work, for the 
day will break and it will come with morning 
songs. St. Thomas could hardly believe any- 


PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 145 
thing, but he was willing to die with Christ, and 
Christ showed him His wounds. 

The other person is one who laments the 
simplicity of his intellect. Be of good cheer, I 
would say to you, and do not despair or despise 
yourself. The Master thanked God that He had 
hidden the deep things from the wise and had 
revealed them unto babes; He also set a child 
in the midst of the disciples and told them that 
if any one desired to be great he must become as 
a little child. It is not through deep thinking 
but faithful doing that one comes to know the 
mystery of God, and faithful doing is within 
every one’s reach. The path which philosophers 
and scientists have often missed has been found 
by shepherds on the hills, and by working women. 
Mary of Bethany and the fishermen of Galilee 
knew more of God than the scholars of Jerusalem. 

St. Francis, his disciples said, carried on him 
the wounds of the Lord Jesus, and an ancient 
master represented them blazing with light as 
he lay upon his bier, so that the dead body of the 
saint was set in the brightness of the stigmata. 
It was a parable that no one may separate light 
from love or Christ’s teaching from Christ’s cross. 

LF. 10 


146 PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE 


Just in proportion as we are made partakers of 
His sufferings shall we be partakers of His gospel, 
just as we are willing to do the will of God shall 
we know the doctrine of God. And step by step 
we shall come to know God Himself, Whom to 
know is life everlasting. 


XII 


FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION, THE 
METHOD OF JESUS 
“‘T am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.””—S#. 
Matthew v. 17. 

T is evident that our Lord’s critics had been 
denouncing Him as an intellectual and 

social anarchist, and one can imagine their evi- 
dence. Here, they would say, is one who has 
assumed the office of a prophet,and what is the 
line of His teaching ? He blows aside the vener- 
able tradition of the fathers as if it were scum on 
the surface of the water; He belittles those 
social rites which have been a fence round the 
national life; He shows no respect to the religious 
party, but associates freely with the outcasts of 
society. He even dares to correct Moses him- 
self, saying, ““ You were told to do that, but I tell 
you to do this.” There will soon be no truth so 
sure that He will not upset it, no custom so whole- 
some that He will not abolish it. He is attacking 


147 


148 FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION 


the foundations of Church and State, loosening 
the faith of the individual, and breaking the bonds 
of society. Perhaps it would be somewhat un- 
scrupulous to put the case in this way against 
Jesus, but the Pharisees were not fastidiously 
honourable in their controversies. And if our 
Lord had taken up the same position in our day 
would He have been treated with much more 
candour ? Suppose a person in Christ’s time 
were a prejudiced theologian, or had an obstinate 
temper, was it not natural that he should be 
shocked by the sayings of Jesus? And so he 
may have come honestly to believe that Jesus 
was not a builder but a destroyer. 

It is also evident that Jesus keenly resented 
this charge, and one can understand His reasons. 
When He was called a glutton and a wine bibber 
He was not gravely concerned, for a gross slander 
answers itself : when He was called a revolution- 
ary there was enough truth in the criticism to 
make it dangerous. He did appear on first sight 
not to improve but to reverse the past, not to 
attack abuses but to uproot institutions, and if 
this had been so it would have been a serious 
reflection, both upon the wisdom and the work 


FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION 149 


of Jesus. Destruction is not the principle of 
growth in any province of God’s universe. Nature 
advances, not by catastrophe but by evolution. 
The buds of next year are already visible when 
the leaves of autumn fall; types merge in 
higher antitypes ; and so God works everything 
up into something better. Nations advance 
most surely, not along the line of revolution but 
of reform. Science would stultify herself if she 
cast down the achievements of past knowledge 
and began with every generation to build upon an 
open site. The teacher who has no piety for 
former things, and attacks what has been most 
firmly held, is to be gravely distrusted. He has 
neither humility nor sanity. He may produce 
a sensation, of real action he is incapable. No 
success can be obtained by negative teaching, no 
progress can be achieved by assault. He only 
does permanent work who builds upon “the 
foundations of many generations”; who is not 
a destroyer but a fulfiller. 

Had the opponents of Jesus been able to take 
a fairer view of His work, they would have found 
that He was the opposite of what their fears 
painted. He did the highest honour to Moses, 


150 FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION 


for He charged the ten commandments with a 
new spiritual meaning, and invested them with 
a new spiritual beauty, so that the greenery of 
spring came upon the bare branches, and the 
austere words of Sinai changed into the command- 
ment of love. If Jesus gave little heed to the 
washing of hands, and the titheing of mint, He 
taught His disciples the higher duty of a clean 
heart, and identified holiness not with ritual 
but with righteousness. Under His spirit the 
God of Abraham and Jacob became our Heavenly 
Father, to be worshipped the world over wherever 
there was an honest heart. What the prophets 
had imagined Jesus revealed, and upon the strong 
morality of Judaism He raised that more generous 
kingdom, which is righteousness, peace and joy. 
If the temple of Jerusalem was to pass away the 
whole world would become the Temple of God, and 
if the Jewish nation lost their exclusive position as 
the “‘servant of the Lord,” the sceptre of a 
greater David would rule from the rising to the 
setting of the sun. If old forms perished, the ~ 
spirit would have freer course; if an over-ripe 
harvest fell before the sickle, it was to be the seed 
of wider fields. 


FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION 151 


Fulfilment is the guiding principle of all success- 
ful progress and ought to contro: every depart- 
ment of action. When, for instance, we attempt 
the regeneration of society, repression may be ~ 
needful as a temporary measure; but repression ~ 
isa policy of despair. It coerces, but it does not 
control; it terrifies, but it does not satisfy. We 
ought to go to the root of the matter and find out 
the causes which create the vices of the people. 
It is not enough to lessen the temptations to 
drunkenness, for instance; we must find out the 
reason why men play the fool after this fashion. 
Were we to shut up the drunkards of the country 
in one inebriate asylum, and then prevent every 
other person from obtaining intoxicating drink, 
we should not have secured the salvation of the 
nation or have fulfilled the mind of Christ. Why 
do men drink and do the other things? What 
are they seeking after? Is it not the case that 
they go to public-houses because their own homes 
are not attractive; that they intoxicate them- 
selves because they have no more wholesome 
excitement; that they are thriftless because 
with irregular labour they have no inducement 
to save; and that they sink to the depths of 


152. FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION 


misery because they have no hope? The gaol, 
the asylum, and the casual ward are not the 
answer to this problem, nor all the laws that can 
ye passed by Parliament. The springs of disease 
must be staunched, and the hopelessness of the 
people lifted. Recently a brewer told me that the 
takings of his company over a large number of 
public-houses were going steadily down because 
the working men preferred to spend the evening 
in a music-hall. This is one of the best things I 
have ever heard of music-halls. They have done 
what a temperance appeal could not accomplish— 
because they have not robbed, they have sub- 
stituted. You cannot repress human nature, 
but you can direct it ; you cannot kill its instincts, 
but you can raise them. When every man has 
a decent home and access to pure enjoyment, then 
the gross evils which batten upon the multitude 
at the base of society will disappear, and the 
corporate life of the people will be redeemed, as 
when some hideous waste strewn with obscene 
tubbish is covered by green grass and white 
flowers. 

The same principle holds in the elimination of 
sin from an individual life, To sin is to miss the 


FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION 153 


mark; the arrow went astray, and struck the 
wrong place. Every vice is the inversion of a 
virtue, it is degenerate goodness. Discontent- 
ment is the querulous ghost of a high ambition 
which might have attempted bold things. The 
black mood of jealousy is distorted affection. 
Avarice is the corruption of the desire of posses- 
sion. Bad temper is the heat which might have 
been wholesome indignation. Lust itself is the 
loathsome travesty of love. Moralists of the 
second order would advise a man to put his sins 
under lock and key: Jesus teaches men to expel 
them. He would transform temptations to sin 
and make them incentives to holiness ; He would 
have us concern ourselves not with the destruction 
of the evil but with the cultivation of the good. 
When one works with his might he has no time to 
be fretful. When he regards his neighbour with 
charity he has no room for envy: When he 
expends his enthusiasm on the highest ends he 
has no steam left for peddling quarrels. When 
one loves the best he knows, he is raised above 
low passions. 

With this principle of fulfilment we ought also 
to approach the erroneous ideas which affect the 


154 FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION 


popular mind and are rivals of the truth. It is 
the cheapest plan to denounce them, and to mock 
the people who are satisfied with such make- 
shifts. It is not good policy, for it does not make 
converts of the heretics, and it is apt to make 
Pharisees of the censors. Does it not stand to 
reason that people would not listen greedily to 
such pseudo gospels unless they were in search 
of something, and would it not be wiser to give 
them what they seek in its most perfect form ? 
Their mistakes are unconscious petitions for 
truth, their halting systems are unidentified frag- 
ments of knowledge. Ritualism is the longing 
for symbols which Jesus met in His parabolic 
treatment of nature and His institution of the 
Sacraments. It is the effort of the vine to climb 
by a framework nearer to the sun, and any excess 
is best cured, not by removing but by extending 
the principle till all life become the transparent 
veil of the divine. Positivism is an effort to 
get at reality and the discovery of God within 
humanity. 
Where mercy, grace and pity dwell 
There God is dwelling too. 


He who finds God in a pure woman or in a noble 


FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION 155 


deed will surely not miss Him in His heaven. 
Agnosticism is the re-action from an unlicensed 
affirmation about spiritual mysteries, and has its 
own place in Christianity where Jesus treated the 
unseen world with such suggestive reserve, and 
taught men that he who did the will of God 
would come to know God’s truth. What has 
given ‘‘Christian Science” its attraction is the 
authority of the mind over the body, and was. 
not Christ for ever teaching the supremacy of the 
spiritual? It is wiser to give a man what he is 
seeking after than to denounce its imperfect 
substitute. It is, indeed, of no use to take 
away unless you can bestow, and therefore the 
wise missionary of to-day finds out what the non- 
Christian religion means, and shows that it is a 
prophecy of Christ. It may be expedient some- 
times to defend Christianity, it is better to pro- 
claim it ; it may be necessary sometimes to attack 
another religion, it is more gracious to satisfy it. 
It is the unknown God whom men are seeking 
through many systems and after many fashions ; 
it is the known God whom Jesus reveals and 
presents to us all. 

Just as religion appears to us a fulfilment or a 


156 FULFILMENT, NOT DESTRUCTION 


destruction of life, shall we come to love or hate 
it. If religion be nothing but a refusing and 
denying, a repressing and mortifying, then it may 
be a necessity; it is also a burden. But this is 
not the religion of Jesus as He taught and illus- 
trated it in the life of Galilee. With Him religion 
was not a bondage, but the breaking of fetters, 
that the sons of God might enter into the liberty 
of their Father’s House; not the limitation 
of the frontiers of human nature, but the 
conquest of new unimagined provinces; not 
the imposition of a catalogue of commandments, 
each forbidding something, but the entrance 
into a world of engaging virtues; not another 
dreary shadow cast across human life, which is 
joyless enough already, but the rising of the sun 
with healing under his wings on the reason, the 
conscience, and the affections of every man. 
Religion according to Jesus not only calls us to 
the marriage feast of life, religion turns its water 
into wine. 


XIII 
CHARACTER THE SPRING OF LIFE 


“A good man out of the good treasure of the heart 
bringeth forth good things; and an evil man out of 
the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.’’—<S?. 
Matthew xii. 35. 


HIS is the compact statement of a truth upon 
which Jesus laid the last emphasis—that 
everything depends on character. The word has 
two meanings. And according to its original 
sense character is the mark made upon a stone by 
engraving. It is therefore the stamp of the soul 
and the expression of a man’s being. It is 
equivalent to nature, it is the very man himself. 
Character has also come to acquire a secondary 
meaning which has much less value in the moral 
currency. It is not now what the man is, and 
will continue to be, but what he says he is or 
appears to be. It is the impression he has 
produced in certain circumstances, the effect of 
certain public actions, the attitude which he 
assumes to the world. It is the outer show of the 


man: it is his reputation. 
157 


158 CHARACTER THE SPRING- OF LIFE 


One profound difference between our Master 
and the Pharisees turned upon the reading of 
this word. With the Pharisees, character was 
reputation, and their whole strength was given to 
performing a religious play. With Jesus char- 
acter was nature, and He was ever insisting that a 
man must be judged not by appearance but by the 
heart ; not by what he says, or even by what he 
does, but by what he is. They made religion a 
thing of the outer life; He declared it a thing 
of the inner life and He was hotly indignant with 
their blatant unreality. Jesus despaired of the 
Pharisees while He hoped great things from the 
sinners, for this simple reason—that the sinners 
at least were honest, while the Pharisees were 
thoroughly dishonest. When they gave alms it 
was to the sound of trumpets, not because they 
loved the poor ; and when they prayed it was in a 
public place, not because they loved God. They 
were irreligious from Christ’s standpoint, not 
because they were doing irreligious things, but 
because they had irreligious hearts. They were 
hypocrites, not because they were living a double 
life, but because they were playing a calculated 
part. They were moral actors, and therefore 


CHARACTER THE SPRING OF LIFE 159 


_ the white flame of Jesus’ anger was ever glancing 
round the Pharisees. 

Common speech betrays our implicit conviction, 
and every day we ourselves acknowledge the supre- 
macy of character. One man may use the most per- 
suasive words, but no one gives heed because they 
are not the outcome of a true soul; another may 
speak with rough simplicity, and his neighbours 
respond because every word bears the stamp of a 
brave heart. When a good man loses his temper 
or is easily offended or grasps at some advantage, 
or fails in courage, we say that he was “ not him- 
self.” This act was foreign to the man, a cari- 
cature of his spiritual likeness. Whena good man 
carries himself right knightly we say that was 
“like him,” as if we had a portrait before our 
eyes, and this act was its replica. We charge our 
friend in time of temptation to be loyal to his 
highest self, to be himself, and to play the man. 
We speak after this fashion, not in the pulpit only, 
but on the street ; so we bear unconscious witness 
that Jesus was right, and that the man’s heart is 
himself. ‘ 

If character be the spring of life then two things 
follow, and the first is that every man’s work is 


160 CHARACTER THE SPRING OF LIFE 


the expression of himself. Just as the Almighty 
is ever creating under a divine necessity, because 
He must express Himself,and just as His character 
can be discovered by those who have eyes to see 
in the parable of creation, so every man works 
under the same compulsion, and reveals himself 
by the fruit of his hands. Every man is doing 
something, whether it be good or evil. You 
cannot stamp out a spring, and from his secret 
self a man’s life is ever flowing, and carrying 
with it the colour of its origin. Why does a poet 
write his verse, or an artist paint his picture, ora 
minister preach his sermon, or an artisan do his 
carving ? Because the idea was in him, and he 
must be delivered of it. His self is in the work, 
and it is the unconscious exposure of his innermost 
being. 

The largest and most convincing illustration 
of this principle is architecture, where the 
theology of the builders is written in masterful 
letters before the eyes of the world. A mosque 
with its wide space, high roof, bare walls, freedom 
from all imagery,declares by its purity and dignity 
that God is a spirit and must be worshipped in 
spirit and in truth. A Gothic cathedral with its 


CHARACTER THE SPRING OF LIFE 161 


long aisles, shadowy recesses, secluded chancel, 
and high altar, witnesses to the mystery of the 
Holy Incarnation, the awfulness of Christ’s 
sacrifice, the solemnity of the sacraments and the 
authority of the priesthood. Upon a typical 
Nonconformist church, without altar or prayer 
desk, with its platform for the speaker and its 
audience chamber for the people might be in- 
scribed, ‘“‘ It pleased God by the foolishness of 
preaching to save them that believe.” Each 
building is a creed wrought in stone, and pro- 
claims to the whole world the deepest conviction 
of the builder. “I believe in the unity of God,” 
says the Mohammedan ; ‘I believe in the sacrifice 
of the mass,” says the Catholic; “TI believe in 
the Gospel,’ says the Puritan. 

Within the history of the same faith one can 
see how the architecture corresponds with the 
religion, either in its days of austere purity or 
of luxurious decay. If you wish to study Chris- 
tianity at its best, visit one of the old Gothic 
churches, and there you find not above the altar 
only, but in every line of the building the sign of 
the Cross. The builders were simple, fearless, 
pure, devout. If you wish to study Christianity 

LF. II 


162 CHARACTER THE SPRING OF LIFE 


at its worst visit a church of the Renaissance with 
its veneer of marble, its glaring style, and its 
meretricious ornaments. It does not matter 
though it were plastered with crosses, from every 
stone it breathes the spirit of the world, and we 
know that the men who raised and decorated it 
were soft, proud, unbelieving, pagan. Even a 
man’s home, so far as its form and furnishing 
depend upon himself, is a confession of character, 
so that you can imagine your host before he 
appears. As aman also is plainly declared by 
the friends with whom he associates, and the 
habits he has cultivated, and the expression of 
his face, and the accent of his speaking and the 
very manner of his walking. 

Character, however, chiefly colours the actual 
work into which one puts his strength and which 
he does with intention. An experienced college 
tutor used to say that he could estimate a pupil 
by his handwriting, and within limits his judgment 
was true. Legibility and beauty depend no doubt 
~upon technical skill ; but there is a moral element 
which is very suggestive, as if the life from the 
secret fountain flowed through the fingers. 
Certain hands with their crisp and decisive strokes 


CHARACTER THE SPRING OF LIFE 163 


testify to a strong character ; certain with their 
slovenly and slithering letters reveal slackness 
and inefficiency. A man may fairly be classified 
by the bargain he makes, by the way he conducts 
a case, by his treatment of a patient, by the finish 
of a table. There are houses which will justify 
the builder and there are houses which will damn 
the builder in this world and possibly in the world 
to come. According as a man is true, so is his 
work ; in proportion as he is false, sa is his work. 
One of the secrets of great art is sincerity, but if 
the soul be crooked the work will be a makeshift. 
It mattered not that the Pharisees whitewashed 
their lives, the rottenness was within, and the 
foulness oozed out and tainted the atmosphere. 
Ruskin discovered in a Venetian church the 
figure of a doge which is a perfect illustration of 
cheap and hypocritical work. One side of the 
forehead is wrinkled elaborately, the other left 
smooth, according as the public can see. One 
side only of the doge’s cap is chased, one cheek 
only is finished. Finally the ermine robe which 
‘is imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground 
hair on one side is only blocked out on the other.” 
“Who,” says Ruskin, “ with a heart in his breast 


164 CHARACTER THE SPRING OF LIFE 


could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim 
lines’ of the old man’s countenance, as he reached 
the bend of the gray forehead, and measured out 
the last veins of it at so many sequins.” “ Now,” 
concludes Ruskin, “ comes the very gist and point 
of the whole matter. This lying monument is 
at least veracious if in nothing else in its testimony 
to the character of the sculptor. He was banished 
from Venice for forgery in 1487.” False heart, 
false work. From that hypocrite of art it is a relief 
to turn to a sincere man of letters, and everyone 
anxious to convince himself of the organic con- 
nexion between character and work should read 
both Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott, and the 
‘““ Waverley Novels.’ No fiction has ever so moved 
its readers to humility, purity, reverence and 
courage. Scott’s novels are a moral inspiration 
and a substantial asset of religion. They have 
taught no man to doubt, nor made any woman 
blush. They have raised and not degraded the 
tone of society, and they were the living fruit of 
Scott’s own soul, and the incarnation of his own 
ideals. Throughout the books breathe his own 
chivalrous temper who was one of the most gallant 
men, and most wholesome Christians in the history 
of Scotland or any land. True heart, true-work. 


Se 


CHARACTER THE SPRING OF LIFE 165 


Conduct as much as work springs from the 
heart, and by the heart must be judged. When 
we say right is who right does, and when we mean 
that we are bound in the first issue to estimate 
men by their visible deeds we are laying down a 
sound principle, but we must apply it with spiritual 
insight. Both God and man try conduct by 
subtler tests than the outward appearance, and 
two actions of the same kind may have a different 
moral complexion. Is it the same thing that a 
man live purely because he is afraid of the unspeak- 
able consequences of vice, as that he keeps his body 
unstained, because it has been redeemed by the 
blood of Christ? Is calculating prudence on the 
same level as devout consecration, and do they 
prove an equal quality inthe soul? Isit the same 
thing that a man should relieve the misery of his 
fellows, because they are part of the body of Jesus 
Christ, as that he should give a public subscription 
that his name may be passed from liptolip? Are 
those two men of the same temper and breed ? 
Which gift do we appreciate more ourselves, one 
given from abundance and from interested mo- 
tives, or the poorer present of a child which has 
cost it long thought and self denial? We ourselves 


166 CHARACTER THE SPRING OF LIFE 


pass behind acts to motives ; we also trace the life 
up to its birthplace. Men are loved who have 
been able to give but little because they gave it 
brotherly, fragrant with love ; men are hated who 
have given largely because they gave ostenta- 
tiously and inhumanly with cold and careless 
hand. 

Before us also stands daily the two ideals of life, 
and we must choose between the Pharisees and 
Jesus. If this life be a stage and we be the 
players, with the world for spectators, then let us 
study our part carefully, so that by our pose and 
speech we may every moment please our fellow 
men, and earn their applause. Verily we shall 
have our reward. If this life be the school for the 
soul, and we be the sons of God, working and living 
continually in His presence, then let us not vex 
ourselves about the sound of our words upon our 
neighbours’ ears, or the effect of our actions upon 
their judgment. Rather let us pray and strive 
that our inner self be cleansed from guile, possessed 
by love and consecrated to the Will of Cod. 
Whether men approve or condemn us it will be a 
light matter, for our judgment is with oar Father 
which seeth in secret but rewardeth openly. 


XIV 
CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 


* And Simon Peter said unto Jesus, ‘ Lord, Thou 
knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee.’ 
Jesus said unto him, ‘ Feed My sheep.’ ’’—Si#. John 
Sex G7 

HEN St. Peter, wrought into amixedagony 

of love and penitence, made this daring 

appeal to the omniscience of the Lord, and obtained 
a decision, his case settled the basis of the Divine 
judgment upon character. It was one in which 
the average man with his rough and ready rules 
would have certainly blundered, and in which even 
persons of insight might have been perplexed. 
St. Peter was a friend of Jesus and had boasted 
loudly of loyalty ; yet he had not only forsaken his 
Master with the rest, but had openly denied Him. 
He was a chosen apostle and set forth to be an 
example of holiness; yet he had confirmed his 
denial with swearing. Certainly he had receivéd 
no money for his desertion; but otherwise, was 


there much difference between Iscariot and Simon? 
1€7 


168 CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 


Both were false, and Peter had made the louder 
profession and had held the more prominent place. 
He might say that he was still a true man and a 
lover of Jesus, but he could not reasonably expect 
a favourable verdict from any jury of his fellow 
men. If denying your friend with an oath in the 
black straits of life be affection, let us rather have 
aman’shatred. Facts are facts, his human judges 
would conclude, for this man to meet his Master 
and speak of love is shameless effrontery. He had 
better hide himself and never again mention the 
name of Jesus. 

St. Peter had himself realized the hopelessness 
of the situation, and until Jesus sought him out 
he had been ashamed to meet with his fellow apos- 
tles. They could only have one mind of him, that he 
was a traitor, and yet he knew that while he was 
everything else that was bad, a boaster, a coward, 
a swearer, he wasnotatraitor. But to prove this 
was impossible. Against his protestation could 
be set his action, and men would only laugh if he 
talked of his intention. No man can open his 
heart to his neighbour and show its secret bias, 
no man can search his own heart and understand 
its workings. This tortured man could hardly 


CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 169 


expect his fellows to understand him, for as he 
keenly remembered he had not understood him- 
self. He was an insoluble enigma, and he had 
hoped that his Master would have done him 
justice. When Jesus seemed to repudiate his 
profession of love, then Peter made one last appeal. 
It is from his fellow men and from himself; it 
is even the words of Jesus to Jesus’ unerring 
knowledge. “ Lord, Thou knowest everything, all 
I said and all I did and all I am, but this Thou 
also knowest, that beneath the foul spume of my 
outer life, the deepest thing in my heart is love to 
Thee. By that love which has borne no fruit, 
which has failed in the hour of need, which has 
been mastered by fear, but which is real and is my 
very self, by that let me be judged. And 
Jesus confirmed his appeal and sent him forth 
upon his apostolic mission, saying, “ Feed My 
sheep.” 

With only a surface knowledge of life we come 
to quick and absolute judgments, and therefore 
one understands the prayer, “‘ Lord, deliver me 
from a young judge.” People are divided into 
two classes with a clear-cut frontier, and each class 
is locked into its own country. So many people 


170 CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 


are good, we say, with various enthusiastic 
adjectives ; so many are bad with every kind of 
condemnation. So many we like with much 
warmth ; so many we dislike with equal warmth. 
With a larger experience and_a riper mind the 
dividing line begins to waver, and we are not so 
confident in either our approval or our disapproval. 
There may be a few saints in whom no fault can be 
found, and who are worthy to have walked 
with Christ in Galilee—we have known one or 
two such people. But on closer examination of 
the candidates for sainthood we are apt to be disil- 
lusionised, and to find that for the most part they 
are men of like passions with ourselves. One 
man comes short of perfection by his temper, 
another by his meanness, a third by his self-right- 
eouness, a fourth by his vanity. Do the Gospels 
suggest that the apostles were faultless ? Had St. 
Francis no failings which were concealed by his 
disciples ? Was not John Wesley proud and 
masterful ? Toplady wrote “ Rock of Ages,” 
but no one wishes to read his controversial work. 
Samuel Rutherford was consumed with the 
passion of Christ, but one may not boast of his 
charity. There are flaws in the marble, some of 


CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 171 


them painfully conspicuous. Even the saints 
demand our charity. 

On the other hand let us console ourselves that 
there are not many thoroughly wicked persons. 
Perhaps we have suffered at some one’s hands and 
spoken strongly against him, but after our indig- 
nation has died down we would frankly acknow- 
ledge that there was much goodness in him. We 
may have censured some one for an evil deed, and 
next day have repented because of something 
kindly that he had done. If history affords few 
perfect saints it also does not contain many 
desperate sinners. Against St. John there is 
Alexander Borgia, against Elizabeth of Hungary 
there is Messalina; but those are rare extremes. 
Neither flawless goodness nor unredeemed wicked- 
ness is common ; but it is more easy to find John 
than Judas. 

As regards the mass of people they are neither 
angels nor devils. The representative man has 
his excellencies and his deficiencies side by side ; 
his character alternates between light and shadow. 
He is capable of strong affection and vindictive 
hatred ; he can rise to magnanimity, and he can 
condescend to pettiness. It depends how he is 


172 CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 


taken and how he is taking himself. To one 
person he is attractive, and to another he is 
repulsive. This is very much the condition of 
us all when you leave out Judas and John; we 
are neither black nor white, but just half and 
between in our spiritual character; we are 
“ whitey-brown.”’ 

When we finally abandon the black and white 
theory we are apt to despair, not only of passing 
judgment on our fellow men, which perhaps might 
be an advantage, but of making any moral dis- 
tinction, which would be a great disadvantage. 
But what are we to think? The figures are so 
contradictory that a balance cannot be struck. 
The wind blows from so many quarters that you 
cannot call it either East or West. The vessel 
tacks so much that one cannot be sure of her 
direction. Pass the select minority of saints and 
sinners, and is there really any moral difference 
between one man and another? Is there any 
ground for the clear-cut distinction made by 
Christ Himself ? Are we divided into classes at 
all in this life, is there likely to be any separation 
in the life to come? Does character elude and 
defy judgment ? ; 


CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 173 


Certainly if one went by the evidence of life 
from the highway he would require not two 
compartments in which to arrange his fellow men, 
but a hundred, and he would be inclined to change 
his specimens from one compartment to another 
daily. And yet is not the soul of every man a 
moral unity ? Are we not bound to believe that 
if we only had the means a man’s character could 
be summed up? Must not every one’s life yield 
a final result ? Occasionally the real character 
is revealed with startling suddenness, as when a 
flash of lightning illuminates the darkness, and 
we see a landscape with ghastly clearness. The 
darkness falls again, but the landscape remains. 
People may live together in the closest intimacy— 
as, for instance, in marriage—and yet never know 
one another. Some day, however, the inner self 
is declared, and the person stands forth as heis 
and as he is going to be. 


We live together years and years, 

And leave unsounded still 

Each other’s springs of hopes and fears, 
Each other’s depths of will. 

We live together day by day, 

And some chance look or tone 

Lights up with instantaneous ray 

An inner world, unknown. 


174 CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 


When that happens we discover, beneath casual- 
faults or casual virtues, the permanent trend 
of character. One person is loathing badness, 
although sometimes he is mastered by temptation, 
and he is loving goodness although often he fails in 
its attainment. Another person secretly loves what 
is wrong, although at times he does what is right, 
and seldom shows badly, although all the time his 
heart is bad. Life upon the surface is a contradic- 
tion because opposite currents meet, and there 
is a confusion of the waters ; but the tide is either 
flowing or ebbing, and God judges not by the 
achievement of life, but by its tendency. It is 
not what a man says, nor what a man does, nor 
even what he is but what he desires to be, and what 
with his poor effort he is trying to be, which decides 
his moral standing. Behind words lie deeds, 
behind deeds qualities, behind qualities inten- 
tion, and the distinction between one man and 
another is the innermost ambition, and the 
chosen attitude of the soul. The final judgment 
lies with God who knows all things, and who 
alone knows us, and God judges by the heart. 

The judgment of God is full of comfort if there 
be in us an honest purpose of goodness. It is 


CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 175 


not easy to vindicate ourselves to men, nor even to 
our own conscience, for the power of the world in 
which we live, and the power of sin in our own 
hearts, are so strong that we are constantly baffled 
in our struggle, after the best. If one should say 
to us, “‘ This is what you ought to have done and 
you did not do it,” alas! that is true. What is 
the good of saying in reply, we tried ? What value 
to men or to ourselves are our tryings? They 
are just another word for our failings. ‘‘ This is 
what you ought not to have done and you did it,” 
alas! thatisalsotrue. We did resist, but we were 
beaten, and our very effort seems to be only 
another name for our sin. ‘‘ What do you care 
for goodness ?”’ the world says ; ““ you, who cannot 
keep your temper, who are so self-willed in your 
actions ; you, who are haunted with such unholy 
thoughts ; you, who are so governed by the love of 
money ?”’ What can a man do but plead guilty ? 
It seems wanton audacity for him to speak of 
righteousness ; and yet, after righteousness he is 
hungering and thirsting. Why, then, does he not 
do righteously ? Wonderful insight ; but could 
you expect the world to say anything else? Un- 
answerable logic; and yet the man knows that he 


176 CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 


is better than the world judges him, or he dares to 
judge himself, and so does another. God pierces 
to the root of all, and understands the human 
conflict ; God believes in the man who from the 
midst of this present strife and defeat lifts up his 
hands with even a dumb prayer to the heavenly 
places. Our judgment is on high, and it shall 
remain when the decisions of lower courts have 
been forgotten. We fell ; God only knew how we 
resisted. We failed; God only knows how we 
attempted. ‘ Now the labourer’s task is o’er ”’ is 
anoble funeral hymn, and this is its most hearten- 
ing verse :— 

There the tears of earth are dried, 

There its hidden things are clear, 


There the work of life is tried, 
By a juster judge than here. 


And the finest lines which Faber wrote are 
these :— 


There is no place where earth’s sorrows 
Are more felt than up in heaven ; 
There is no place where earth’s failings 
Have such kindly judgment given. 


This basis of judgment is not only merciful ; 
it is also righteous, because our success may be 


CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 177 


fortune, our intention is fact. .If a man does his 
best to swim to the wrecked vessel with a life-line, 
and is thrown insensible upon the shore, who will 
have the heart to judge him because he has failed ? 
Your cheap moralist talks of facts, and no doubt 
this is a fact that he is lying there like a helpless 
and useless seaweed. There are other facts which 
are worth mentioning ; as, for instance, that he 
made a brave attempt, and that he only failed 
because the surf was too strong. We are apt 
to ignore such facts in our moral judgments, but 
they are not forgotten when God is judge. With 
God the effort is counted as the act, for in the 
spiritual world it is only a question of time, when 
the struggler will succeed. What one desires to be 
he shall be before set of sun, and the soldier who 
has fought bravely to the end in spite of his 
reverses shall be glorified. Our failures may one 
day count higher than our successes, and our 
gracious thoughts which were choked in utterance 
be of higher value than our finished words, when 
God sits on the judgment seat and weighs in His 
infallible scales, not only the patent facts of life 
which men have praised, but the spiritual imagina- 
tions of the heart which we never realized. 
LF. 12 


178 CHARACTER JUDGED BY ITS TREND 


. . . All the world’s coarse thumb 
And finger failed to plumb, 
So passed in making up the man’s account}; 
All instincts immature, 
All purposes unsure, 
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s 
amount. 


Thoughts hardly to be packed, 
Into a narrow act, 
Fancies that broke through languages and escaped ; 
All I could never be, 
All men ignored in me, 
This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. 


XV 
THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 


“Tf a man love Me he will keep My word, and My 
Father will love him, and We will come unto him and 
make Our abode with him.’’—St. John xiv. 23. 


HE question of Judas, not Iscariot, and the 
answer of Jesus reminds us that there are 
two ideas of the relation of God to His creatures, 
and therefore two ideas of His manifestation. 
According to one, which was the message of John 
Baptist and of the prophets before Jesus, which 
is a perfectly true message, and requires always 
to be preached, God is to be imagined outside 
and above this world. He is our creator, by 
whose will we have been brought into being, our 
governor by whose righteousness we are tried, 
and our preserver by whose mercy we are kept. 
He is almighty and awful, inaccessible and un- 
~known—a distant God, 


Far withdrawn upon the hills of space. 


This is the transcendence of God and the idea 
179 


180 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 


reached its climax when Deism reduced God to 
the chief mechanic who has made the universe 
like a watch and sees it go, and when Art repre- 
sented the Almighty as an old and majestic person 
holding the globe in his hand. According to 
Jesus and those who have entered most perfectly 
into His mind, God lives inside this state of 
things and is revealed within the soul of man. 
We have not to go to the heights to find Him nor 
descend into depths; we have not to turn to the 
right hand nor to the left. Behold, He is a 
presence throughout nature and His dwelling- 
place is the obedient soul. Within He speaks 
to us and we can speak to Him. In a human 
sanctuary we can meet with Him and He with 
US 2 


Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and spirit 
With spirit can meet ; 

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer 
Than hands and feet. 


This is the immanence of God, and this truth 
since the days of Jesus has never been more per- 
fectly grasped than by the mystics before the 
Reformation, and our own Society of Friends. 
Nor has it ever been more beautifully and con- 
vincingly expressed than in the pages of Tauler’s 


THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 181 


Theologia Germanica to which Luther owed 
so much in his day, and our best Broad Church- 
men like Kingsley and Maurice in our own day. 
While God within was the religion of our Master 
and He taught that it would be fulfilled to His 
disciples by the coming of the Comforter no one 


- _ will seriously contend that it has been the con- 


scious and working faith of the Church. For 
one Christian who believes in God within, there 
are ninety-nine who believe in God without. 
And why? For two reasons, and the first is 
historical. The Church has not passed beyond 
the transcendence to the immanence of God 
because her thoughts have up to this time been 
largely formed by a powerful theologian who 
lived in the fourth century, and whose hand is 
still upon her mind. When one mentions the 
name of St. Augustine people listen with 
respect because they understand that he was the 
chief of the Christian fathers, and with indifference 
because they know nothing about him except 
that he had a saintly mother, and was con- 
verted through Monica’s prayers. They do not 
realize that this African theologian has had 
more to do with the ordinary Christian’s con- 


182 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 


ception of God, and his practical feeling to- 
wards God, than all the religious books which 
stand on priority lists at the circulating libraries, 
or which are used as books of devotion from day 
to day. It is however a fact that just as the 
average Christian largely takes his ideas about 
Satan and the fall from Milton’s Paradise 
Lost so he has learned his view of God from 
St. Augustine, and although he may never have 
read a word of that austere thinker’s books he is 
echoing his thoughts every day in his own prayers 
and his modest creed. Certainly St. Augustine 
knew God at first hand, and it was a real God 
whom he declared. After all it is one’s personal 
experience which gives the colour to his thought 
and work, and just as the agony of Michael 
Angelo’s strenuous soul passed into his pictures, 
especially into his Last Judgment, so the 
moral tragedy of this thinker’s early life tinged 
all his writings. He had been a pronounced sinner, 
and he grounded his theology on sin; he con- 
ceived of God as a judge full of righteous wrath 
and man as a morally helpless being who could 
not even choose the good. Salvation was there- 
fore from beginning to end the work of God, in 


THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 183 


which we could have no co-operating share, and 
grace was distributed according to His abso- 
lute good pleasure. God was most high beyond 
our reach unless He stooped to us, and man was 
most low beyond any hope unless God chose to 
have mercy. We were not sons who had gone 
astray but who still carried in our soul the dim 
image of God, and had a claim upon His good- 
ness; we were alien mendicants who stood at 
His gate and waited till alins were thrown to 
us. 

The other reason why the Church has so 
seldom grasped the immanence of God is not 
historical and personal, but natural and moral. 
There is a certain economy in truth, and the 
Church as well as the individual must rise from 
one level to another as the soul is able to breathe 
the rarer atmosphere. John Baptist came first 
according to the wisdom of God, and his doctrine 
of repentance was the preparation for the evangel 
of Jesus. It was necessary to quicken the con- 
science before men could rightly imagine God ; 
it was necessary to have a clean heart before there 
could be a dwelling-place within man for God. 
Between man and God there could be no com- 


184 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 


munion while the divine law was despised and 
broken. Keeping the commandments must 
always be the condition of keeping communion. 
It was a good thing therefore for the decadent 
Roman Empire and a corrupt human society 
that St. Augustine was the ruling theologian. 
The debauched and callous conscience of that 
age must be shocked by the terror of judgment, 
and whenever a man is sinning boldly and has no 
fear of the divine righteousness it is wholesome 
that he should learn to think of God upon a 
throne high and lifted up, and of himself as a 
miserable and undeserving sinner. As Judaism 
preceded Christianity and the God of Sinai 
became the God of Calvary, so in the order of 
human experience we must first believe in the 
righteousness of God before we believe in His 
love, and we must have His commandments 
written upon our consciences before He can come 
through the door into our hearts. 

With all respect to St. Augustine it must be 
allowed that his was not the final idea of God, 
and even in those early days a Greek father had 
entered wonderfully into the mind of Jesus and 
was teaching Christianity not more powerfully, 


THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 185 


but more perfectly, than the imperious Latin. 
In Clement of Alexandria, who lived nearly two 
centuries before Augustine, you have the instance 
of a man who is not read by the people at large, 
but who through his influence on a number of 
minds has indirectly been changing the thought 
of our day, as when the warmth of summer 
succeeds the chill quickening air of spring. 
Clement held that not a few individuals but a 
race was reconciled to God by the life and death 
of Jesus; that our present existence was not a 
probation of which none could see the end, but an 
education for us all; that God was not a divine 
emperor in a far off Rome, but one in whom we 
lived and moved and had our being. Beneath 
the masterful hand of St. Augustine the pro- 
found and spiritual thought of this Greek was for 
the time crushed, and at last the Roman Church, 
or at least Pope Benedict IV, removed Clement’s 
name from the calendar of saints. But wisdom 
is justified of her children, and as Jesus followed 
the Baptist so the theology of Clement in the 
order of religious experience and of thought 
must supersede the theology of St. Augustine. 
We are living in this more genial day and are 


186 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 


under the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. There 
are many in the Church, and more outside the 
Church, who regard the doctrine of the Holy 
Ghost as little else than a speculative dogma of 
theology or a pretty conceit of the mystics. What 
it really means is the spiritual presence of God 
throughout all matter, all thought, all life, and 
especially in the souls of men. With this presence 
the conception of God is crowned and completed. 
For God is first to be thought of as the source of 
all things, the Eternal Father, and then as the 
active power that creates everything, the Eternal 
Son, and lastly as the life which pervades the 
universe—one Holy Trinity, All-wise, Almighty 
and All-loving. 

Within the space of this generation Christianity 
has been shifting her basis from the Latin to the 
Greek conception of God with excellent results for 
ourselves and for our children. The immanence 
of God puts a new face upon religion, making 
our relation to God at once more reasonable and 
more loveable. If God be outside of us, then 
our moral sense is unreliable as an instrument 
of duty and of knowledge. We have no right 
to think of conscience itself 


THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 187 


As God’s most intimate presence in the soul 
And His most perfect image in the world. 

The Eternal is absolutely beyond our reach, and 
our reason is worthless for the study of truth. 
Wecan neither test nor verify divine revelation, 
but must accept whatever has the. sanction of 
the miraculous or the authority of the Church. 
God is then simply a governor, administering 
this world with its load of sin and sorrow, its 
innumerable lives charged with hope or despair, 
from a distance and from a throne—with justice _ 
but without sympathy. If God be outside, 
Christ is a messenger who comes from the unseen, 
accomplishes a work of expiation, reconciles 
God to the world and returns again to His place. 
We are creatures whom God has made, whom 
He can use as He pleases ; we are debtors whom 
He may retain or lose at His sovereign pleasure. 
Judgment becomes a distant event in unknown 
circumstances, while Heaven and Hell are simply 
places. All that follows if there be no Holy 
Ghost and no spiritual presence of God in the 
human soul. 

If, on the other hand, God pervades all things 
by His spirit, and lives especially in the hearts 


188 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 


of men, then another aspect is given to every 
relation of the soul to God. Our religious faculty 
responds to God as the eye to light. No priest 
is then needed to mediate between the soul and 
God, and to hold for us the keys of God’s King- 
dom. Every faithful soul can have direct com- 
munion with God, none interfering, and none 
being able to forbid. God becomes a Father 
doing the best He can for all His children both 
in this world and in that which is to come. Itis 
now man who has to be reconciled to God, not God 
to man. It is God who seeks man as he wanders 
away from the Divine Presence, not man who is 
seeking a far off and hiddenGod. Theology rests 
not on Adam now, but on Christ, not on man’s 
depravity but on Christ’s Incarnation, not on the 
Church but on the Holy Ghost. Hell becomes 
that state of mind from which God is shut out, 
and Heaven is that purity where He can make His 
home. Nature isnolonger a strange and hostile 
environment, redeemed by incursions of the 
supernatural but the vesture of the Eternal. 
And prayer becomes less and less a petition for 
a change in circumstances, and more and more 
the desire for conformity to the Divine will. 


THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 189 


Never surely has religion been made more real 
and effectual, more persuasive and inspiring, 
than in this description of Jesus. Our Heavenly 
Father dwelling with His Son in every heart which 
has kept the great commandment and has been 
cleansed by love, is the Gospel of the Holy Ghost. 


XVI 


REASONABLENESS THE TOUCHSTONE OF 
TRUTH 


“T beseech you by the gentleness (or memes 
of Christ.”—2 Cor. x. I. 


ENTLENESS is in itself so beautiful a 
word, and would form so excellent a 

text, that one hesitates to exchange it for 
any other term, but gentleness is not quite 
what St. Paul intended in this appeal. The 
word which is translated gentleness has only 
come to assume that shade of meaning by a 
fortunate usage, and first of all conveys some- 
thing more profound. It enshrines one of the 
most characteristic ideas of Greek thought, which 
might with advantage be acclimatized in our own 
thinking. The root is a word which means to be 
like, and so by an easy transition to be seemly, 
and our noun therefore has the sense of what is 
reasonable, or reasonableness. This conception 


was not Jewish, for the Jews were not a con- 
190 


THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH ior 


spicuously reasonable people, but it was of the 
essence of the Greek mind. The Greek believed 
that there was a certain standard of fitness which 
it might not be easy to define, but which was quite 
recognizable, and by which everything should be 
judged. It was not enough that any way of 
speaking had a certain authority, or that any line 
of action had the popular suffrages, the Greek 
referred it to his permanent and independent 
standard—was it according to reason? Both 
thought and deed had to be estimated, not by 
the force behind them, or the number of people in 
their favour, but by their conformity to reason, 
for surely the supreme end of life, as Bishop 
Wilson, so dear to Matthew Arnold, used to say, 
is “to make reason and the will of God prevail.” 

Just as the Jew believed—to make this principle 
of reasonableness plainer—that there was such 
a rule in the universe as perfect and unchangeable 
righteousness, by which all actions are to be 
tried—a righteousness which does not vary with 
the fashions and moods of any generation, which 
can neither be manipulated by any school of 
morals, nor disestablished by a popular vote of 
any kind, any more than you can change the 


192 THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH 


sun in the heavens by new theories of light—so 
did the Greek hold that there was perfect and 
unchangeable truth by which all thinking was to 
be tried. There must be an ideal, distant yet 
distinct, in every sphere of human knowledge— 

a standard of beauty, by which we pronounce the 
Apollo Belvidere or the Venus de Medici perfect, 
a standard of sound by which we judge the notes 
of music, a standard of quantity by which we are 
certain the whole is greater than its part. You 
cannot call the head of a satyr lovely; you 
cannot mistake discord for harmony ; you cannot 
imagine a place where two and two make five, 
unless you happen to be insane. And so must 
there not be some rule which will be to our common 
ways of speaking and thinking what gold coinage 
is to paper money, a standard of judgment, and a 
goal of attainment? So far as we think like that. 
we think truly; and what we may say of our- 
selves, or others may say of us, does not matter. 
The world of thought is not a chaos where truth 
and falsehood are local and provisional terms, and 
where it matters nothing whether a man talks 
sense or nonsense so long as he and his circle are 

satisfied. There is, as Plato would put it, “a 


THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH 1093 


law of things,” and you always trifle with law at 
your risk. 

There is not one of us but pays homage to 
what we call the fitness of things. We feel about 
some action or speech, this may be very taking 
but it is not seemly, and we know that although 
this kind of thing may pass for the time, it would 
never do if life were constructed on such lines. 
Or we feel again, this may not catch the ear of 
groundlings, but the world would be a very 
harmonious sphere if this were the fashion of it. 
Above all party cries and empty forms and 
sudden crazes and hereditary prejudices, sounds 
the majestic voice of the higher reason like 
the boom of the cathedral bell in Giotto’s Cam- 
panile, above the confused noise of the carnival 
in the street below. But whose voice is this, with 
its note of eternity ? Is it not that of God Him- 
self, who is the supreme reason as He is the 
supreme righteousness, from whom to deflect is 
falsehood, to whom to conform is truth? What 
is becoming is divine, what is divine is be- 
coming. Amid considerable confusion in the 
moral w orld, some lines do emerge to prove an 
unseen intellectual order, and one may fairly 

LF. 13 


ate thse 


194 THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH 


cling to the belief that our minds are not flung 
like vessels without compass upon a festless 
sea of opinion, but that there is some Pharos of 
absolute truth, 


A mark of everlasting light 
Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow. 


Reason remains the law of the spiritual universe, 
as Hooker has it in one of the noblest passages 
either of theology or literature: “Her seat 
is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of 
the world ; all things in Heaven and earth do her 
homage—the very least as feeling her care, and 
the greatest as not exempted from her power ; 
both angels and men, and creatures of what con- 
dition so ever, though each in different sort, yet 
all with uniform consent admiring her as the 
mother of all their peace and joy.” 

If one ask how can men with their limitations 
recognize what is true, we answer in exactly the 
same fashion as we recognize what is right. 
We have a faculty which reflects the perfect 
standard of righteousness, just as the clocks in 
our houses, more or less correctly, repeat the 
standard time. Conscience is perpetually passing 
judgment on the moral character of actions, and 


= 


THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH 1095 


in the main we obey her voice. Reason is a 
similar faculty which estimates the truth of things, 
and is the echo of the eternal mind, and reason is 
ever condemning or approving ideas on the ground 
of their being true or false. We hear this voice 
also, and sometimes obey it, but we are apt to 
forget that one is as much bound to repudiate an 
idea because it is untrue as to refuse to do an 
action because it is wrong. No doubt our reason 
is often dark, and requires to be educated, just 
as our conscience is faulty and requires to be 
refined. If our clocks are neglected they may 
go too fast or too slow, but it still remains that the 
majority of clocks are attempting to be at one 
o'clock when the gun fires. Reason may be 
biased by some error, theological, or social, or 
national, and the light that is in us be darkened, 
but still reason in the long run does assert herself, 
and is for all practical purposes the replica of the 
eternal law. “It is,” as the Greek tragedian 
taught us, “no child of to-day’s or yesterday’s 
birth, but hath been no man knoweth how long 
since.” 

When one suggests that reason is the arbiter 
of truth, he does not undervalue two other sources 


196 THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH 


of authority. Reason does not supersede that 
revelation of the character and will of God which 
is contained in the Holy Scriptures. According 
to the belief of the Christian Church, the Eternal 
has communed with certain persons, as, for 
instance, the Hebrew prophets or the holy apostles 
whose souls were susceptible and whose ears 
God had opened. They received such clear and 
living ideas of truth that their words have 
become an inspiration and a guide to their fellow- 
men. If the principle of inspiration is apt to be 
belittled in the present day, it is worthy of remem- 
brance that eminent men of science have traced 
their most luminous thoughts to a spring beyond 
themselves, and beyond all men. Helmholz in 
his delightful autobiographical sketch declares 
that good ideas often came actually in the morn- 
ing on waking, and another has this note—* The 
law of induction, discovered January 23rd, 1835, 
at 7 a.m., before rising.” They were conscious 
reinforcements from the source of all truth. 
One can see the development of a sixth sense in 
the race, and may well believe that with every 
age an increasing number of persons will hear 
the voice of God as did Abraham and Isaiah, St. 


THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH 107 


Paul and St. John. It is one thing, however, 
to believe that God is truth, and has specially 
declared Himself through a receptive race, and 
another to accept any book, without question, as 
an infallible standard of truth. It is evident that 
such scripture could only come to us through a 
human medium, and nothing can guarantee the 
veracity of the medium except the inherent 
reasonableness of his message, and of that the 
human reason as the reflection of the Divine 
must be the judge. 

Nor does reason belittle the authority of the 
Church, for it would be huge self-conceit on the 
part of any generation to ignore the stored wisdom 
of the past, and most unscientific not to avail 
ourselves of the work that has already been done. 
Intellectual culture is acquired by the study of 
the best that has been taught and written, and 
spiritual culture cannot afford to fling away the 
riches of an accumulated heritage. The Church 
is the treasure house of spiritual discoveries, 
experiences, endeavours, victories. 


The souls of now two thousand years 
Have laid up here their toils and fears, 
And all the agonies of their pain. 


ig8 THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTEA 


The voice of the saints speaking in councils, from 
the Council of Jerusalem unto the last which has 
been guided by the Spirit of God, or speaking 
through the creeds from that first profession of 
faith in Jesus with which the Apostolic Church 
began her theology, to her last deliverance on 
doctrine, is very impressive and informing. But 
one remembers here again that the Church is made 
up of fallible men, and that the Church has often 
erred. Reason must therefore sift her utterances 
also, and separate not merely what is true from 
what is false, but very often what is local and 
temporary from what is universal and eternal. 
And so the final appeal must be made, and as a 
matter of fact is made, to the voice of reason. 

One of course does not forget that the authority 
of this high court of reason is constantly im- 
pugned from opposite quarters. Cardinal New- 
man was never weary of depreciating reason as a 
guide in religion, and at last, in what seemed to 
many intellectual despair, placed his own under 
the control of the Roman Church, and Protest- 
antism, forgetful of the main principle of the 
Reformation, has more than once in sheer panic 
lost faith in reason. It is well to be reminding 


THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH 199 


ourselves that God Himself planted this faculty 
within our nature, and that it is illuminated by 
His own Spirit. That it is the one faculty whose 
function is the study of truth, and that it is to this 
faculty that God makes His appeal. His com- 
plaint in the Old Testament is that “‘ Israel doth 
not know, My people doth not consider,” and in 
the New Testament Jesus’ appeal is to human ex- 
perience—‘‘ What man of you?” The ideal person 
of the Old Testament is the wise man, and the 
beginning of religion in the New Testament is 
when a man repents and changes his mind. 
Christianity, of all religions, should be the last 
to appeal to credulity, and to teach superstition ; 
its appeal should be ever to a man’s judgment, 
and its hope to establish it in truth. The business 
of reason is to sift what is real from what is unreal, 
to crush and wash the quartz, to gather the 
particles of pure gold, and to offer the precious 
metal for the acceptance of faith. Reason search- 
ing the Bible and travelling through the history 
of the Church leaves the chaff and keeps the corn 
—taking Abraham’s splendid faith, leaving the 
intended sacrifice of Isaac; taking the pity of 
God over Nineveh, and leaving the fanaticism of 


200 THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH 


Jonah; taking the spirituality of the Psalms, 
and leaving their fierce invectives; taking St- 
Paul’s love for Christ and leaving his rabbinical 
arguments; taking the patient study of the 
fathers, and leaving their fantastic allegories ; 
taking the Institutes of John Calvin, and leaving 
his persecution of Servetus; taking John Knox’s 
courage, but leaving his frequent roughness ; 
taking the Puritans’ earnestness, but leaving 
their narrowness. And we know what to take 
by its radiant reasonableness, because nothing 
can be more becoming, more winning, more 
satisfying, and more like God. This we ought 
to believe is a reasonable world wherein the 
reason planted in the human mind will harmon- 
ize with the reason which speaks from without, 
and therefore we need neither deny nor suspect 
this high faculty which God has set as an 
inner light within the soul. As one of the most 
spiritual philosophical thinkers of our day, the 
present Master of Balliol, has written—‘“‘ Reason 
lies nearer to us than any external authority, 
and no outward evidence can be sufficient to 
overturn its testimony. ... It is only because 
the content of a revelation is implicitly rational 


THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH 201 


that it can possess any self-evidencing power or 
exert any moral influence on the human spirit.” 

It remains, however, after we have fully 
appreciated the faculty of reason, and have 
vindicated its proper function in the sphere of 
religion, that we must join with one heart in 
thanking God for the revelation of Jesus Christ. 
As there can be no conflict between reason and 
faith, since they have different functions, so there 
can be nothing but harmony between reason and 
Christ, because Christ is the answer and fulfil- 
ment of reason. What the light is to the eye, 
Christ is to human reason. He reveals that 
perfect image of God and of man, and that perfect 
rule of life and character after which the human 
mind by many sages and saints has been earnestly 
seeking, and which in the words and work of 
Christ it recognizes and welcomes. If human 
reason be the dim shadow of the Divine reason, 
then Christ, who is the Logos of God, by virtue 
of His deity, is also the supreme reason of man, 
by virtue of His humanity, and in Christ reason, 
Divine and human, meet and blend. Christ 
becomes therefore to us the standard of thought 
in religion, not by the imposition of God, but by 


202 THE TOUCHSTONE: OF TRUTH 


the constitution of our nature. He only thinks 
rightly who thinks with Christ. He who commits 
his mind as a docile disciple to the Spirit of 
Christ is delivered from the bondage of error and 
_ brought into the liberty of truth, and the highest 
point of religious certitude is reached when the 
Christ within the Bible speaks to a man and is 
answered by the Christ within the man. Apart 
from Christ, 

The intellectual power through words and things 

Went sounding on its dim and perilous way. 
Since the true Light has shined, it is our duty and 
our salvation to follow Him till every thought be 
brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, 
and at last we stand where the day has broken and 
the shadows have fled away. 


XVII 
CONTEMPORARY FAITH 


“We trust in the living God.”—1 Tim. iv. Io. 


HIS is the faith of the Christian Church 
and also of the human soul. But it is . 

apt to be denied from two opposite quarters, 
and first by those who are not believers. They 
have reasoned that as the microscope reveals 
no Deity in matter, and the telescope does not find 
Him in the heavens that He is nowhere; or, 
they have been so puzzled by the anomalies and 
contradictions of life that they have not been 
able to accept the idea of any moral controlling 
will. For one reason or another a number of 
quite honest people have concluded that we 
cannot get behind the phenomena of the universe, 
and that if we did we should not find that 
intelligent mind and personal will which 
represents the idea of God. They cannot trust 
in the living God, because there is no convincing 
proof of His existence. With this attitude of 


203 


204 CONTEMPORARY FAITH 


intellectual agnosticism we have nothing to do 
on this occasion. 

The second person who denies the idea of the 
living God is an earnest believer, and his denial 
is not a theory but a practice. He believes 
firmly that the universe has had its creator, 
the human race their ruler, and the soul her 
Saviour, but his faith is couched in the past 
tense. God lived once without doubt—hearing 
prayer with evident response; doing wonders 
in the eyes of all men; sending forth prophets 
from His presence ; judging nations with rewards 
and punishments—a God whose going could 
be seen by all the nations and who was more 
real to the saints than the sun above their heads. 
But, and here faith passes unconsciously into 
unbelief, the same person does not believe with 
unrestricted mind in the living God of the present, 
guiding nations now as surely as He guided 
Israel in the days of the prophets, doing wonders 
now as in the days of the apostles, speaking 
to men now as He spoke when the books of the 
Bible were being formed, visible unto those who 
have eyes to see, and audible to those who have 
ears to hear. His presence has to be found in 


CONTEMPORARY FAITH 205 


the dead centuries ; His character is a fresco on 
the walls of an ancient temple, His fellowship 
lives in the experience of Jewish saints. This 
faith looks back to see God, it does not look 
round ; it trusts in God who once came forth 
from His secret place, but has withdrawn Him- 
self. Many a devout person recoils from the 
thought that God still works as in the former 
days. If he desires to know what God’s mind 
is he betakes himself to the voices of Hebrew 
writers ; if he desires to know what God does he 
travels back to Hebrew history. God in that 
past is clear and active, in this present He is 
silent and ineffective. And this seems a reverent 
and devout faith. Is it not really an insidious 
and enfeebling form of religious unbelief ? 

Can God be living if He has ceased to speak 
and to act? Can one conceive a God who is 
indifferent ? If he be God in the robust sense 
in which the Hebrew prophets believed when they 
made their triumphant comparison between the 
living God of Israel, and the idols of the heathen, 
or in the more intimate sense in which Jesus 
spoke of His Heavenly Father, then His spirit 
is still guiding men as He guided the apostles and 


206 CONTEMPORARY FAITH 


prophets, and He is still moving down the paths 
of present day history as the ark led the Children 
of Israel. God has not withdrawn Himself from 
nature, which is sustained by Him as surely in 
this late age as when the world was young. 
Neither has God abandoned the government 
of men, and the world of human souls. It is 
thinkable, though less than reasonable, to deny 
God altogether; it is neither thinkable nor 
reasonable to affirm a living God up to the year 
Ioo A.D. and then to imagine Him henceforward 
handless and speechless. 

When one says that he does not deny that 
there have been certain periods of unique spiritual 
recaptivity when elect souls came into the secret 
of God, and became the medium of radiant 
revelation. It has indeed been a feature of — 
history that the human mind has at times been 
lifted, as mountains rise from the plains, and has 
come near to the skies, and this law of elevation 
runs through other departments than religion. 
There was a century before Christ at Athens 
when Art, literature, philosophy, and politics 
touched their zenith, and to-day we travel back 
to see the shapes of beauty and to read the books 


CONTEMPORARY FAITH 207 


of that high summer. Never again have we had 
architecture like that of the Acropolis or statuary 
like that of Pheidias; no dramatist has risen to 
be compared with Sophocles, no statesman rivals 
Pericles. But Art and Letters still live, and the 
great men of that day have had their successors. 
The Jewish people had a genius for religion as 
the Greeks had for Art, and the flower of their 
race became the ambassadors of God, bringing 
to their high office qualities which in the case say 
of Isaiah and St. John have never been equalled. 
Their writings, and above all the words of that 
Chief Prophet in whom this line culminated, will 
ever remain an inspiration for religion. And that 
is why those writings constitute the Holy Scrip- 
tures. Outside that line however one must 
believe that God spoke in the ancient time by 
such prophets as Plato and Confucius, according 
to their measure, and that in later days God has 
spoken by St. Augustine and Clement, by Luther 
and Calvin, by A’Kempis and John Bunyan. 
There are reasons why the canon of scripture 
should not be opened, but one need not be afraid 
to say that there are books within the Bible 
which are less spiritual, and have done less 


208 CONTEMPORARY FAITH 


for the human soul, than some which are with- 
out. Every one will agree that Pascal is a more 
profound and spiritual teacher than the author of 
Ecclesiastes, and that if he had to choose for the 
purpose of his soul between Esther and the Pil- 
grim’s Progress he would prefer the Puritan pro- 
phet. This does not mean that the Book of 
Esther served no end, but it does mean, and this 
is the point, that God still speaks and that we 
ought to trust in a living God. 

Again one remembers that there was a brief 
three years when God wrought visibly in human 
life as He never did before, and never has done 
since. The public life of Jesus was a supreme 
exhibition of the power of God, beside which 
the creation of the sun and moon is not to be 
mentioned. There has only been one Christ, nor 
can we imagine another like unto Him, who in- 
deed in His solitary greatness is the only begotten 
and well beloved Son of God. But it must be 
added that God wrought by the hands of Moses 
and of Samuel before Christ came, and that God 
has been working in the ages since Christ left, 
and that, always excepting Christ’s own life, 
the things done outside the Bible record have 


CONTEMPORARY FAITH 209 


been more wonderful than the things contained 
therein. It is amazing that people should dwell 
so much upon the life of the Jewish nation, and 
should see so little of God in the life of their own 
people. Why should preachers be haranguing 
Christian congregations on the petty skirmishes 
of Jewish tribes while any moral instruction to 
be derived from them could be more appropriately 
gathered from the Civil War of England, when 
acute religious problems were faced and thought 
out. When one desires an illustration of judg- 
ment to prove the moral government of God he 
can find it, not only in the flames of Sodom and 
Gomorrah, or in the decay of the Jewish state, 
but in the decadence of Rome, in the humiliation 
of Spain, in the horrors of the French Revolution. 
No man may belittle the Hebrew prophets as 
leaders of men and judges of righteousness, but 
they are not the only men whom God has called. 
If Elijah held the pass for his people, Knox bore 
himself bravely for Scotland; Isaiah was not 
more to Jerusalem than Luther has been to the 
German nation, and no one would contend that 
John the Baptist accomplished more for Judah 
than John Wesley for England. One may hazard 
LF. 14 


210 CONTEMPORARY FAITH 


the guess that Xavier has had more souls for 
his reward than that gracious prophet Hosea, 
and that Spurgeon turned more to God by his 
preaching than St. Paul in all his mission journeys. 
God’s hand has not been shortened that it could 
not save, His ear has not been heavy that it could 
not hear during all the ages. Still from the 
sacred presence comes the prophet, still in the 
midst of life God works. 

It is open to say that it would have been much 
easier to find God in the ancient times. But 
one does not gather from history that people had 
a keener sense of God in those Bible days. Isaiah’s 
generation believed in the God who brought their 
fathers out of Egypt and who shepherded the 
patriarchs ; but they did not believe in the God 
of Isaiah. If they had, he need not have written 
his first chapter, and he would not have fallen 
a victim to the persecution of unrighteousness. 
Contemporaries no more accepted the prophet- 
ship of Isaiah than Bunyan’s fellow-countrymen 
acknowledged his message. The generation of 
Jesus believed firmly in God, but He was not the 
Father from whom Jesus had come. When 
Jesus claimed to speak for God, they considered 


CONTEMPORARY FAITH 211 


Him a blasphemer, and when they heard the 
voice of God in their synagogues they denied 
it. If any one wished to know God he must 
listen to Moses and the prophets. For now, 
after having been in their own day misunderstood 
and put to death, the prophets are accepted as 
the servants of God. God’s operations were 
put back several centuries so that it was piety to 
hold that God was speaking in the fourth cen- 
tury before Christ, but blasphemy that Jesus 
represented God as surely as Isaiah. 

Are we not also, as much as the Pharisees, 
hindered by our timidity in recognizing God 
outside Bible history, and by our want of spiritual 
discernment in contemporary life. The past seems 
full of poetry ; the present is dreary prose. We 
accept the judgments of the Jews, we ignore the 
judgments of ourown nation. We praise God for 
the deliverances He vouchsafed to Israel, we are 
unmoved by those which He has wrought for 
England. We celebrate a Jewish Providence 
lavishly, we hesitate to identify an English 
Providence, and hence spring two evils which I 
wish to mention in conclusion. 

One is the divorce between faith and politics, 


212 CONTEMPORARY FAITH 


which was not the habit of the best men of Israel, 
nor in the great days of English history but, all 
men being witness, is a calamity of our time. 
Not only does no one refer to God in arguing 
the affairs of the State, but, what is far more 
important, it is not the custom to think of God. 
Men do not believe that the laws of moral govern- 
ment are running in the land and should govern 
both our home and foreign affairs. We refer our 
successes and our reverses to every cause except 
to the hand of God who blesses a nation doing 
righteously, and afflicts a people when they do 
wrong. Ought not the final appeal be neither to 
the mind of Parliament nor to the votes of the 
elector, but to the law of righteousness? Is 
not the power which will reward obedience to 
that law and punish every affront God Himself ? 
Has not the Church herself failed in her faith 
when she clings tenaciously to the creeds of the 
fourth century or of the seventeenth, and does 
not recognize that the spirit of God which guided 
our fathers guides also their children into clearer 
light and deeper truth. 

After the same fashion we not only lose 
instruction as citizens of the commonwealth but 


CONTEMPORARY FAITH 213 


we also lose comfort in our daily life, because we 
are enslaved by this form of respectable unbelief. 
We believe that God heard some far distant 
Psalmist, and that He guided Abraham in all 
his ways; we doubt whether He is as certainly 
hearing and guiding us. We are sure He spoke 
to Abraham, we are quite as sure He does not 
speak to us. As if He were not the same God 
and we have not as much need of His help. This 
is not reverence, it is irreverence; this is not 
modesty, it is ignorance. Are we not entitled to 
believe that there is no blessing granted to a 
saint within the range of Bible history which is 
not ready for the saint of to-day. What relief 
from care, what deliverance from fear, what con- 
solation in sorrow, what light in darkness, would 
come to our soul if we in this year of our Lord 
could only muster up enough courage to believe 
that we are as dear to God as any Hebrew patri- 
arch or prophet, and that there is no work of 
God recorded in Holy Scripture which He will 
not abundantly perform for the humblest person 
who puts his trust in the living God. 


XVIII 
POSITIVE RELIGION 


“‘T know whom I have believed, and am per- 
suaded.”—2 Tim. i. 12. 


HEN no one has any fixed opinion, the 
entrance of aman with full blooded con- 

victions is like a bracing wind from the moors 
reviving a sickly atmosphere, and one reads the 
letters of St. Paul and hears him declare his creed 
with respectful envy. He had been a conscien- 
tious anti-Christian and now he was as pronounced 
a Christian. He did not dwell in the low country 
where a man feels his way through the fog, but 
he stood on the heights where one lives in the 
eye of the sun. His attitude was not that 
of modern culture—that Christianity has some 
admirable ideas, and so also had Paganism, that 
no religion can be absolutely right, andthat the 
best plan for a thoughtful man is to appreciate 
every religion and limit himself tonone. St. Paul 
was convinced in the marrow of his bones that all 
the good that could be found in his former faith and 


214 


POSITIVE RELIGION 218 


in every other was gathered up with a thousandfold 
of increase in the religion of Christ. If a man 
were a Christian he had obtained the chief-good, 
and the more thorough a Christian he was the _ 
fuller would be his possession. The Apostle was 
sure of God, and sure of immortality because he 
was sure of Christ. He knew whom he believed 
and was persuaded of salvation, and he remains 
to all ages the classical type of religious certitude. 

Such stalwarts of faith stand out in bold relief 
from the multitude of people- nowadays who 
may not be distinctly irreligious, nor wilfully 
sceptical, but who neither know what they 
believe nor where they are. This timid uncertainty 
is largely the re-action from a strident and im- 
perious dogmatism. If we are afraid to be 
positive about anything, our fathers had no hesita- 
tion in being positive about everything. They 
‘included in their creed not only the facts but 
also the theories of Christianity, which is the 
extravagance of faith. They insisted not only 
on what was eternal, as for instance the atoning 
sacrifice of Christ, but alsoon what was temporal, 
speculations about its principle. Truth was 
argued out to its jots and tittles and a burden was 


216 POSITIVE RELIGION 


laid upon the reason which it could not bear. 
Instead of gathering the tendrils of faith round 
the person of Christ our fathers stretched them 
to embrace the most distant and doubtful dogmas. 
As the capacity for faith is limited, if you decen- 
tralize its forces and spread them over too wide 
an area they may be attacked in detail and cut 
off from the centre. Dogma has its own justifica- 
tion, for it is simply reasoned truth, and one is 
surely bound to think out religion as carefully as 
the Fiscal Policy, it is the product of theological 
science and the result of the process should be 
preserved. But when dogma is transferred from 
the province of reason to that of faith, and 
virtually replaces Christ, it becomes a tyrant of 
the soul. And the nemesis of dogmatism is 
scepticism. 

The pendulum has swung to the other extreme, 
and the vice of unlicensed affirmation has given 
place to the habit of unlimited legation. Actual 
Atheism, as the author of Natural Religion says, 
is “‘ speculatively monstrous—a mere speculative 
crotchet or a grave moral disease.” But one 
wonders as he talks with his acquaintances or 
looks at people in church how many have a 


POSITIVE RELIGION 217 


working creed which they could vindicate, which 
they have tested and hold with all their mind. 
What strikes one to-day is not what people 
believe but what they do not believe. One feels 
that their attitude is not positive but negative. 
They are always letting you know what they do 
not hold about the Bible or doctrine or the future 
life. Preachers are themselves affected by this 
atmosphere, so that they come to state truth in 
terms of worldly wisdom. The Personal God of 
the saints becomes the eternal something-or-other ; 
He who was dead and is alive for evermore is 
reduced into the Christ idea; the miracles, 
it is suggested, should not be taken as fairy 
tales after the suggestive discoveries of Dr. 
Charcot of Paris in hypnotism ; and immortality 
is saved from incredibility by the perpetually 
hopeful papers of the Psychical Society. One 
fears that in some quarters the pulpit has lost 
nerve and has forgotten the evidence of history, 
that whenever Christianity has been most con- 
vinced she has been most victorious, and whenever 
she has been most apologetic she has been most 
futile, and also that it is the schools within Chris- 
tianity which assert and construct ard not the 


218 POSITIVE RELIGION 


schools which are critical and eclectic which have 
chiefly affected their generation. Our fathers 
may have been too sure about everything; it 
would be an immense gain if some of us were 
absolutely sure about anything. 

No doubt it is a good thing that if the past has 
added its own imaginations to truth the plaster 
should be stripped off the walls, and the original 
beauty should be revealed. But it would be a 
disaster if the intellect of the Church should be 
so occupied in recasting the form of the Scriptures 
as to have nostrength left for declaring the Gospel 
contained in the Scriptures. It is well enough 
to repair a house, but one does not want to be 
left houseless. Is it not time that the strength 
of the ministry were withdrawn from criticism 
and given to evangelism? We have had enough 
of recanting, we long for some confessing. If 
criticism has instructed us in the historical evolu- 
tion of the Bible the question still remains, Do we 
believe that in this book God has revealed Himself 
to the human soul? It is right to cleanse our- 
selves from Jewish conceptions of Christ’s sacrifice, 
but are we certain that by His Cross and Passion 
Christ has redeemed mankind from the captivity 


POSITIVE RELIGION 219 


of sin? Granted that we no longer assign a 
literal meaning to the imagery of the Apocalypse 
are we holding fast to personal immortality 
beyond the grave? 

We are justified in disbelieving things which 
have not been proved, but only if we believe the 
things which have been proved. For a modern to 
refuse to believe something simply because his 
father did believe it, or to be willing to believe 
anything if it be not in the Bible, seems to be a 
principle of thought to-day, and it is really very 
simple-minded. Is it not the case that any 
book which denies is supposed to be honest and 
thoughtful, and any book which affirms to be pre- 
judiced and obscurantist ? The people who doubt 
everything which the Church of Christ has held 
most firmly for nineteen centuries give them- 
selves amusing airs of superiority, and the people 
who hold the heart of the Christian creed are 
liable to be regarded with intellectual pity. As 
a matter of fact there is no more ability in denying 
than in affirming, nor any greater liberality in 
doubting than in believing. If there be a bigotry 
of orthodoxy which in the past has been intol- 
erant there is also a bigotry of heterodoxy which 


220 POSITIVE RELIGION 


in the present is most insolent. There is nothing 
to choose between an over believer and an under 
believer in the matter of breadth. The extreme 
right and the extreme left meet on a common 
basis of intolerance, and also, as France has 
illustrated more than once, of persecution. The 
man who holds a crude view of the atonement 
is not one whit more unreasonable in discussion 
than his neighbour who does not believe in the 
atonement at all. The determined defender of the 
Athanasian Creed is not more narrow thana cer- 
tain type of Unitarian. When unbelief arises from 
intellectual pride it rivals the arrogance of dog- 
matism. As Lacordaire says, it considers “every 
limit as an insult to its capacity,” and “ presumes 
to treat with God as between equal and equal. 
Such a man no longer studies for the love of truth, 
but against it. His knowledge is but a stubborn 
duel between himself and God.” 

It is pathetic to notice how negation realizes 
its homeliness, and tries to create some modest 
substitute for Christianity. People whose intel- 
lect has been obliged to lay aside the Gospels 
turn with ingenuous confidence to Mrs. Eddy, 
and women who have not been able to believe the 


POSITIVE RELIGION 221 


apostles used to speak a few years ago with a 
beautiful far away look of Madame Blavatsky’s 
illuminating message. It comes with a shock 
of surprise that the author of Ecce Homo after 
giving us so engaging a likeness of Christ should 
in Natural Religion invite us to worship the 
moon and the stars, and that distinguished men 
of science should turn from the doctors of the 
Christian Church to spiritualistic charlatans rap- 
ping on tables with their toes. Had Maskelyne and 
Cook instead of following the business of ingen- 
ious conjurers set up a religion one is haunted 
with the idea that they would have swept the field 
of unbelief and gathered in by the thousand 
that kind of person whose delicate culture and 
remorseless reason have not been able to accept 
Christianity. What does this grotesque pro- 
cession of make-believe religions mean? Is it 

not that faith alone satisfies and denial affords 
~ no rest ? 

Christianity has no quarrel with any of her 
ghostly rivals, but rather considers them to be 
prayers for something better. We assume that 
every man desires to believe, and in offering 
Christ for the satisfaction of his soul we lay down 


222 POSITIVE RELIGION 


three grounds of religious certainty. And the 
first-is authority, or let us say the Bible. Chris- 
tianity is bound up with Christ, and we are 
dependent upon our knowledge of Him in the 
first instance upon the Gospels and Epistles. 
Within the sacred writings is the only history of 
Christ—how He lived and died and rose again. 
When one believes he does so on the ground that 
this record is probably true, and it is reassuring to 
remember in this age of unflinching criticism that 
as Professor Rendel Harris says, ““Every new 
discovery pushes back the date of St. John’s 
Gospel.” The second ground of certainty is 
testimony, or the voice of the Church. Whether 
one be a believer or not it is very impressive that 
a vast body of people from the first century to the 
twentieth have trusted in Christ and have declared 
with one consent that He has been the Saviour of 
their souls. If we accept the word of a traveller 
about the land he has visited or of a man of 
science on the work he has done, why should we 
not give the same weight to religious testimony ? 
Why do we make so much of evidence in every 
department of life except religion, and why do 
many prefer the evidence of non-religious persons 


POSITIVE RELIGION 223 


on faith to those who are its chief witnesses ? 
It does not follow that because Mr. Darwin knew 
about worms that he was an authority on the 
soul, or because Mr. Huxley was a most lucid 
teacher of natural science that he had any right © 
to say the last word on miracles. Even in religion 
one must be scientific, and depend not upon 
amateurs but upon experts. Are we not more 
likely to arrive at the truth in this high affair of 
faith by listening to the saints than to persons 
whose admirable studies have been among the 
lower animals ? 

The final ground, however, of certainty must be 
experience. There are only two provinces of 
absolutely sure knowledge; one is pure mathe- 
matics and the other is the experience of the soul. 
When we say ‘*‘ The whole is greater than the part ” 
we are stating an axiom which is embedded in 
our constitutions, and in order to contradict it 
you would have to reconstitute the mind, and 
for that matter the universe. This axiom belongs 
to the nature of things, and the Almighty Him- 
self could not make the part greater than the 
whole. When St. Paul says ‘‘ I know” in religion 


he is falling back upon his spiritual consciousness. 


224 POSITIVE RELIGION 


First, he realized Christ in Heaven at the right 
hand of God, next he observed Christ doing 
great wonders in his own life, and finally he 
found Christ in hisown soul. He was now united 
to the Lord after so close a fashion that for him to 
live was Christ, and his life was hid with Christ 
inGod. Nonecould shake his faith, for he carried 
Christ within him, none could separate him from 
the Lord, for he was with Christ in the heavenly 
places. If you object that his conciousness 
might be wrong you have come to the end of 
things. If a sane man like St. Paul is not a 
witness to his most profound experience, and if 
he is deceived about the thing he knows best, then 
human experience is worthless, and we have no 
certainty that we even exist. If Paul had a 
right to say “I” and we allow him to be a con- 
scious being, then he had a right to say “I know 
whom I have believed” and we ought to accept 
the certainty of such experience. 

When a man has the evidence of experience he 
is better off than those who had the privilege of 
sight, for sight did not convert every person in the 
days of Christ’s ministry, and the senses are 
often most deceptive. The witness is now in the 


POSITIVE RELIGION 225 


man himself, and he is as sure of Christ as of his 
own existence. The Bible does not now prove 
_ Christ to him but Christ proves the Bible, and his 
complaint of St. John’s Gospel is not that it 
relates things too hard for faith, but that it has not 
told him one thousandth part of the grace of 
Christ. The probability of the Bible on which 
he first rested, and the probability of the Church 
on which he next rested, becomes the certainty 
of personal experience. He is not concerned 
about the date of the Gospels ; they have become 
contemporary documents. The drama of Christ’s 
passion and resurrection have been repeated 
within his soul, and the voice of the Church fills 
with greater majesty the simpler notes of his own 
faith. 

Christianity is for every man first a venture and 
then an experience, and it is as positive as science. 
Science rests originally on faith, and so does 
Christianity. There is first the scientific ima- 
gination, and then the scientific experiment 
till the hypothesis becomes a law. After the 
same fashion Christ invites men to follow Him 
and promises everlasting life. There is a presump- 
tion that Christ is a Saviour, and this presumption 


LF. 15 


226 POSITIVE RELIGION 


becomes a probability, with the Gospels in a 
man’s hands and the history of the Church before 
his eyes. Why should a man not obey the invita- 
tion which Christ gave and fulfil the condition of 
obedience which He laid down. Let him suppose 
for the time that this Saviour, who according to 
testimony has saved so many, is living, and let him 
believe in Him for the time at least, as so many 
have believed even unto death. It is the most 
supreme experiment, but there are reasons for 
making it, and also strong hope of its success. If 
Christ never spake, and never lived, the man will 
not have lost anything, for the words assigned to 
Christ have been worth the hearing, and the 
life assigned to Christ is the best for living. And if 
He still stretches out His hands, and still receives 
sinful men, and still leads them in the way ever- 
lasting, it will be the most successful venture of the 
soul, for eye hath not seen nor ear heard the 
reward which waits Christ’s disciples in this 
life, and in that which is to come. 


Whoso takes his cross and follows Christ 
Will pardon me for that I leave untold 
When in the fleckered dawning he shall spy 
The glitterance of Christ. 


XIX 
THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 


“Tf ye then, being evil, know how to give good 
gifts unto your children, how much more shall your 
Father which is in Heaven give good things to 
them that ask Him ? ”—Mait. vii. 11. 

T is a property of our Master’s words that 
they are contemporary with all ages, and 

this argument for prayer applies to our own time 
and our own way of thinking. What hindered 
a man from praying aright in our Lord’s day 
was a want of sincerity—that Pharisaic temper 
of mind which had turned prayer into a vain 
repetition. What hinders a man from praying 
at all to-day is a perversion of sincerity, that 
frame of mind which refuses to believe in any- 
_ thing not physical. Prayer according to this 
modern standpoint was a pardonable peculiarity 
of the period when men had not learned the uni- 
formity of nature, and when one miracle more 
did not matter. Some still pray because they are 


indifferent to science ; some because they under- 
227 


228 THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 


stand science ; but many find the words freezing 
on their lips because of the surrounding temper- 
ature. They are hag-ridden, not by the laws 
of nature, but by the theories of science; they 
are brow-beaten by those who may know the 
facts of science, but who have not correlated 
them with 'the facts of religion. They are the 
victims, not of science, but of sciolism. And 
long before our day Jesus taught His disciples 
to appeal from this tyranny, to the supreme 
reason, or the nature of things. 

Prayer has been defined in many ways—as 
communion with God, as aspiration after the 
highest things, as doing our daily duty, but Mr. 
Stopford Brooks was right when he insisted 
that prayer in its plainest meaning is a petition 
addressed to God. Take the element of petition 
out of prayer, and prayer may be a wholesome 
exercise of the soul or a spiritual energy of the 
life, but it ceases to be what we mean by prayer. 
Prayer with Jesus was straightforward and 
unhesitating petition, asking God to do some- 
thing, and believing that He would do it. And 
when Jesus laid the duty of petition upon His 
disciples He went on to assert the reasonable- 


THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 229 


ness of a man asking and of God answering, by 
that argument from man to God which he loved 
to use and which is thoroughly scientific. If a 
child in an earthly home were hungry he would 
turn by an instinct to his parents, and if he asked 
bread would the father give the child a stone ? 
Impossible, because it would be contrary to 
nature, and if you could imagine a state of affairs 
where the offspring, whether birds in a nest or 
infants in a home, receive stones instead of food 
from their parents, you would have a topsy- 
turvy world. Jesus, therefore, argues along the 
line of reason, that if an earthly parent, although 
from his limitations often foolish and sometimes 
evil, yet does the best in his power for his chil- 
dren, will not the Almighty and All-wise Love of 
which human love is only the shadow, do better 
still for His great family ? And, therefore, our 
Master teaches that men ought everywhere to 
pray without fear, and without doubt. 

When we ask whether it is reasonable to pray, 
and not merely a fond superstition, it surely counts 
for something that prayer is an instinct. From 
Socrates who commanded his disciples to begin 
every work with the gods, since the gods are the 


230 THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 


masters of affairs, to the little child which learns 
the name of God by its mother’s knee, one finds 
the soul turn to God as a flower stretches itself 
in the direction of light. In the straits of life, 
however indifferent a man may have grown to 
prayer, or however keenly he may have argued 
against prayer, upon a petition he will fall back. 
Nature in an agony is never atheist, and many 
have cried 
God be pitiful, who never said 
God be praised. 

What does it mean that a bird has wings but 
that there is air in which to fly, or that men are 
moved to pray in an orderly universe, but that 
there is a God to answer them? Must not reli- 
gion be taken account of in the theory of things 
quite as much as the verified law of gravitation, 
and the more speculative principle of evolution, 
and is not prayer the core of religion? Both 
Canon Liddon and Sabatier say in exactly the 
same words, “ Prayer is religion in act”; and 
Sabatier asserts that the mere worship of nature 
is not properly religion because it cuts a man off 
from prayer. ‘It leaves him and God,” says 
that brilliant Frenchman, ‘“‘in mutual remote- 


THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 231 


ness, with no intimate commerce, no interior 
dialogue, no interchange of thought, no action 
of God in man, no return of man to God.” Of 
course the compass of prayer may range from 
the sacred intercourse between Christ and His 
Father to the despairing wail of the sceptic, 
““O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I 
have a soul.” But it remains the pulse-beat of 
religion, and until religion be argued out of human 
consciousness, prayer must be justified. If there 
be a God, and if there be a soul, then, as George 
Herbert has it, prayer is— 
God’s breath in man, returning to his birth. 

It is for experience to decide whether prayer 
be of practical use, and it is always better 
to depend upon expert witnesses—to hear Dar- 
win rather than a gardener on the variation of 
plants ; Lord Kelvin rather than a telegraphist 
on the properties of electricity ; and the saints 
rather than amateur critics of religion upon 
prayer. One turns to Abraham who interceded 
for Sodom, to Jacob who wrestled with the angel 
until the day broke, to Moses who in the dark- 
ness of Sinai obtained God’s mercy for his nation, 
to Elijah who opened and sealed the heavens 


232 THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 


by prayer, and to the unknown poets who gave 
us the matchless liturgy of the Psalms.. One 
appeals in later days to St. Paul, whose letters 
break off at great moments into petition, to St. 
John who in the vision of prayer beheld the 
Heavenly Jerusalem, and to the Chief Saint of 
God who spent whole nights in prayer upon 
the lonely mountain side. One remembers in 
modern times the multitude of believing men who 
have wrought marvels by prayer; how the more 
Martin Luther had to do, the more he prayed; 
how Cromwell on his deathbed interceded for 
God’s cause and God’s people, in the finest 
prayer ever offered by a patriot; how it was 
written of “the Saints of the Covenant” in 
Scotland that they lived “ praying and preach- 
ing,” and that they died “ praying and fight- 
ing.” Time would fail to tell how the saints of 
the Church and the champions of God’s cause 
have prayed; but in our time we should re- 
member what was said by Lord Salisbury of 
Mr. Gladstone, that he was ‘“‘a great Christian,” 
and that brilliant Statesman drew his strength 
from the springs of prayer. What possessed 
those men that they undertook no work till they 


THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 233 


had first met with God, that they turned unto 
Him in every hour of defeat, that they carried 
to His feet the trophies of their victories? Was 
all this pure waste of time, and sheer delusion 
of soul, and were they—the men who have known 
most about religion—simply deceived when they 
testify of religion’s chief act? Is this credible ? 

Granted, then, that men should pray, and that 
God will answer. What is given? Well, the 
answer may come, not in granting anything nor 
in taking anything away, but in a new state of 
mind. It is right to ask for such things as we 
need, and that we be saved from the things which 
we fear; but the chief of all prayers, in which 
all others are included, is this—“‘ Not my will, 
but Thine be done.” Francis Bacon laid down 
this principle in science, ‘‘ Nature can only be 
controlled by being obeyed,” and Bishop Gore 
points out that “the philosophy of prayer lies 
in the same law of correspondence.” As children 
in the House of God we have to fall into 
its spirit ; to learn the lesson of obedience and to 
guard ourselves against selfish purposes. When 
our will is the will of God, the great end of prayer 

has been achieved, and everything which terrifies 


234 THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 


and frets passes away. “‘ Donot pray,” said one 
of the most holy men I know to his devoted ser- 
vant, “that I be cured of this disease, for it is 
incurable, and therefore we may not pray against 
the Will of God. Pray that through the pain 
of the body my soul may be sanctified.” So 
the heart is brought into harmony with the 
mind of God, and His peace which passeth all 
understanding possesses our souls. When this 
happens something is certainly done, and quite 
as certainly the order of the universe has not 
been broken but confirmed. 

Again definite things may be given which 
are not visible. St. Paul’s thorn in the flesh 
" was not removed ; but he received grace to turn 
it to good purpose, and was able to glory in his 
affliction. This principle we can verify without 
turning to the saints and apostles. We pray 
to be delivered from some humiliating disease ; 
instead thereof God teaches us patience, and we 
learn the meaning of the Italian saying, “‘ To 
endure is also to do.” We desire quick success 
in life and we have to wait, but in the discipline 
our character ripens, and character is more than 
wealth. We pray that some one’s life be spared 


THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 235 


with which our own is interwoven; the loved 
one is taken, but our heart is also lifted into the 
heavenly places. We pray for light on some 
problem, and it is slow of coming; but in the 
darkness we are taught to trust. It is said that 
the inhabitants of a Greek island besought the 
gods for a gift of gold, and the gods told them 
’ to dig their land over and they would find price- 
less treasure. They did so with persevering 
toil, and found no gold, but their vines yielded 
the sweetest grapes in Greece. . 

Have we, then, no ground to pray for tangible 
things ? For the healing of the sick, for deliver- 
ance from danger, for the welfare of our friends, 
for our daily bread ? Are we to be bludgeoned 
into silence when flesh and blood are bursting 
into a petition by an exposition of the unchange- 
able order of nature or by gratuitous information, 
that when we pray for a shower of rain we are 
asking’ for as great a miracle “as the levelling of 
Monte Rosa to a plain”? Are we to be politely 
laughed out of faith by clever writers making 


ce 


game of the “sturdy beggar” type of prayer ? 
Certainly the history of devotion affords some 


remarkably sturdy beggars who were not ashamed 


236 THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 


to beat at the door of God’s palace and who 
refused to leave till they got an answer. One 
may cite, for instance, what Professor James in 
his Varieties of Religious Experience calls prayer 
of the “crassest petitional order.”  Miiller of 
Bristol kept five large orphanages, besides circu- 
lating much religious literature, sending out 
several hundred missionaries, and teaching - a 
hundred and twenty thousand children in his 
schools, at a total cost of £1,500,000, and he never 
had a subscription list or made an appeal for 
money. It is an absolute fact that he simply 
laid everything before God in prayer, and he 
never wanted for the support of his orphans. 
He is a witness to the success of prayer, acting in 
the physical sphere ; and I like to associate the 
experience of that good man with the evidence of 
Sir Oliver Lodge, who says, “ Religious people 
think it scientific not to pray in the sense of 
simple petition. . . . If saints feel it so they are 
doubtless right, but so far as ordinary science 
has anything to say to the contrary a more child- 
like attitude might turn out truer and more in 
accordance with the total scheme. . . . Who are 
we who dogmatize too positively regarding law ? 


THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 237 


. .. Prayer we have been told is a mighty 
engine of achievement, but we have ceased to 
believe it. Why should we be so incredulous ? 
Even in medicine, for instance, it is not really 
absurd to suggest that drugs and no prayer may be 
almost as foolish as prayer and no drugs.” 
We come here to a province of insoluble 
mystery—the How—but it is possible to delimi- 
tate the frontier between reason and superstition. 
When God helps us He does not reverse the laws 
of nature, nor does he act without agents. God 
may answer a prayer for rain by guiding the rulers 
to build storage works and to irrigate the country: 
or a prayer against pestilence by moving the 
people to cleanse their homes and live more tem- 
perate lives. Ife pray that our country should 
have the victory in a just cause, the answer would 
come not through a legion of angels joining our 
troops, but through the mind of the general being 
inspired and the hearts of his men being strength- 
ened. When people in danger of shipwreck cry 
to God, it is not likely that the sea will be re- 
duced to a calm, but it is likely that succour will 
come through the capacity of the captain. If it be 
God’s will to grant the recovery of a sick person, it 


238 THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER 


will be accomplished through the skill of a physi- 
cian. In what particular are the laws of nature 
violated in such beneficent operations? Is any- 
thing more in keeping with human consciousness 
than action upon the mind from an unseen source, 
and is not the material the servant of the spiritual ? 
Do not, therefore, be ashamed to pray, and do not 
be afraid to ask anything you need in submission 
to the will of God, for you are not only fulfilling 
the instinct of your own nature, but you are 
acting according to that highest view of the 
universe which places an active intelligence over 
all its operations. You appeal from the vast ma- 
chinery of the universe to the will which directs 
it ; from the forces which we cannot control unto 
Him round Whose throne they stand as mighty 
angels. You appeal from the things which change 
and shift, from the mysteries of nature, and the 
perplexities of life, to the mind, to the heart, and 
to the hand of your Father in Heaven. 


XX 
THE DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE 


“The powers that be are ordained of God.”— 
Rom. xiii. 1. 
HIS deliverance of St. Paul commands atten- 
tion both by its substance and its occasion. 
The apostle declares that the authority of the State 
does not rest either upon the usurpation of the 
strong man, who holds the government by force, 
or upon a social contract in which the citizens, 
like a body of shareholders, elect their board of 
directors. St. Paul is persuaded that it comes 
from God, Who calls the magistrate to his office, as 
He calls an apostle, and that the magistrate is in as 
true a sense an officer of God. There are three 
ethical institutions in society, the family, the State 
and the Church, and if the family and the Church 
have any divinity so also has the State. 

It follows, therefore, that to resist the government 
of the State is to resist the government of God; 
that when the officers of the State collect taxes, 


239 


240 DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE 


they are acting as the ministers of God, and that 
every one should pay tribute, not only that he may 
escape the wrath of the magistrates, but that he 
may fulfil his own conscience. Whether there may 
be occasions when a citizen is released from this 
obedience by the act of the State or by the com- 
pulsion of his conscience is another question, but 
it is evident that such circumstances must be 
considered a rare exception, and be very anxiously 
weighed. As a rule, for the citizen to resist the 
State is the same in moral value as a child being 
disobedient to its parents, or a Christian being 
disloyal to the Church. The State is asphere of 
moral government whose sanctions are derived . 
from God Himself. 

As there is no direct connection between the 
preceding part of the letter and this passage the 
apostle evidently was giving what he judged a 
necessary and permanent piece of advice. And 
one has not to go far for a reason. The Jews 
were never easily governed, and when a Jew 
became a Christian there was a special danger that 
the new wine of the Kingdom of God would go to 
his head, and that he would be carried away with 
wrong ideas about the freedom of the Messianic 


DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE 241 


religion. It would not be easy for him to respect 
the imperial government, nor would he be quick 
to see the necessity of civil obedience. Religion 
is a fermenting element, and the spirit of God stir- 
ring in a man’s soul might excite him in unex- 
pected quarters of his life. Nothing could be more 
unfortunate than if the disciples of Jesus, who 
Himself was so respectful towards all authority, 
should become revolutionary, and the misfortune 
would be doubled if Christianity were associated 
with anarchy in the capital of the world. The 
Christian faith was calculated to reform, not to 
destroy the State, and there could not have been a 
greater catastrophe in that day than a dissolution 
ofthe bonds of government. It isnot by rebellion 
against stated authority that Christianity works, 
it is by regenerating the individual, and estab- 
lishing a true ethical order. St. Paul in insisting 
upon the divine ordinances of the State is setting 
his face against a heady individualism, and a 
destructive nihilism. His words had a special 
application in that day when old things were 
passing away, and all things becoming new; and 
they have a seasonable application in our day, 
when ancient ideas of reverence have ceased and 
LF. 16 


242 DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE © 


authority is being reduced to a minimum both 
in Church and State. 

If, however, we are to believe in the Divine 
authority of the State we must attach some de- 
finite meaning to the word, and I do not think I can 
quote a wiser statement than that of Dr. Newman 
Smyth in his Christian Ethics: ‘“‘ The authority 
of the State is derived immediately from the moral 
value of the social relation which it organizes. 

. . . If these primal relations of humanity have 
moral worth, and are to be brought to the highest 
possible realization, then the State is invested 
with their ethical authority, and is itself an 
ethical end.”” What is meant is that there are 
social relations existing before the State, and that 
those relations cannot be superseded by the State. 
It should, rather, give effect to them and become 
the most comprehensive form of human relation- 
ship. The will of the State is a combination 
of the will of the individual citizens. As Professor 
Seth puts it in his study of Ethical Principles : 
“‘ The visible sovereign is the representative of this 
invisible sovereign”’; or, as Locke says, “The 
sovereign power is the public person vested with 
the power of the law, and so is to be considered as 


DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE 243 


the image of the commonwealth.” To disobey 
the State is therefore to disobey one’s own larger 
self, and one’s own better self—the self in which 
the ideals of conscience and of reason are incarnate. 

If the authority of the State be the fulfilment of 
theethical instinct of the citizens, thenthat author- 
ity falls to the ground in two circumstances. Ifthe 
State ceases to bea public person, and becomes a 
private person, that isif the ruler instead of living 
for the benefit of the State and in order to fulfil its 
noblest destiny lives for himself, and to aggrandize 
private interests, ‘hen it is plain that he is no longer 
ordained of God. He is not now the depository of 
the general will, which returns again to the citizen 
and has to be incarnate in some other person. This 
was the justification of the French Revolution. 
Or again, the will of the people may arise so that 
their conscience be no longer represented by the 
forms of government. In that case government 
will have to be recast, and to be brought 
into conformity with the advancing will of the 
people. There must be a continual re-adjustment 
between the moral sense of the people and its 
embodiment in the State. Asan old fellow student 
and friend has written, “The uncrowned and 


244 DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE 


spiritual sovereign of the universe is the nation 
itself,” and Milton has nobly conceived the State 
“as one huge Christian personage, one mighty 
growth or stature of an honest man.” 

It has been a misfortune that the State has not 
had its due place in our mind, and it would be a 
good thing if every person called to exercise the 
rights of citizenship were to make a careful study 
of the ‘‘ Republic ” of Plato, which still remains the 
greatest treatise on the State. Plato’s idea was that 
“the good man is the good citizen of the good 
state,” and that inner excellence is not sufficient 
without an outer excellence, or in other words 
that you cannot separate ethics from politics. 
No man can live apart from the State, no one 
ought to wish tolivea private life. According to 
the Greeks the State.was the ethical environment 
of the individual, and Professor McCunn has the 
same idea in his admirable book on the Ethics 
of Citizenship. Hence in ancient times one finds 
the subordination of the individual to the State, 
and the profound respect for the function of the 
State. Just as the individual Christian will have 
a dwarfed and selfish character and will not rise to 
the stature of Christ, if he be not a member of the 


DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE 245 


great Christian commonwealth called the Church ; 
and just as a man or woman will not as a rule 
have the same richness, or fulness of sympathy, 
who has not shared in the experiences of family 
life,so the citizen who is not a living member of 
the State will come short of ethical completeness. 
This great idea of the ancients is, I think, con- 
firmed in our own observation by the paltriness 
of the citizen who is indifferent to public affairs, 
and to whom the State is nothing but a ‘ 
watchman ” to protect his property and his person, 
and also by the magnanimity of those persons who 
give themselves to the service of the State with 
all their heart and mind as to the service of God. 

People would not be afraid of this high doctrine 
of the State if they realized the object of its exist- 
ence. We must cleanse ourselves from the idea that 
the State exists simply to rule, and in some cases 
to coerce. While of course the State restrains the 
vagaries of self-will in political affairs as the 
Church does in theological affairs, and the family 
in personal affairs, the great object of the State is 
not to destroy but to develop the personality of its 
citizens. The ideal of the State isso to regulate 
corporate life that every member of the common- 


* night- 


246 DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE 


wealth shall come to his full height, and have his 
just opportunity of living. It is a fallacy to imagine 
a conflict between individualism and collectivism, 
as if the individual could fulfil his destiny apart 
from his fellows, or as if the association of men to- 
gether meant the obliteration of the individual. 
Just as the individual forgets himself in devotion to 
the State so will he find himself again, and just as 
the State life is strong so will the life of the individ- 
ual be also strong. The duty of the State to the in- 
dividual is first to protect him from all wrong, and 
secondly to give him the opportunity for all good. 
On the one hand, to use concrete illustrations, the 
State represses crime, and on the other the State 
promotes education. Ontheone hand it defends 
the country, and on the other secures its well- 
being. That is a happy State which maintains a 
just balance between those two functions, justice 
and benevolence. 

Had we higher ideas of the State two advantages 
would follow. The citizen would make more 
conscience of his citizenship, for few things are 
more disheartening than the different attitude 
of obligation which the ordinary man has to his 
family and to the State. He is keenly sensitive 


DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE 247 


about the honour of his home, he endeavours to 
promote its welfare, he will sink himself in its 
interest. Towards the State he is lukewarm 
and neutral. He does not concern himself about 
its affairs or its character unless his own welfare 
isinvolved. He isnot proud ofits glory unless he 
obtains some’ direct prosperity for himself. The 
State does not represent to him anything more in- 
spiring than the police or sanitation. It is simply 
an administration of convenience. No doubt 
his imagination may catch fire when the State 
assumes an imperial form, but even then his alle- 
giance is very utilitarian. When the State assumes 
a municipal form, it does not seem to some of 
us that the average citizen has evercome within 
a thousand miles of believing that the govern- 
ment of a city is a divine ordinance, or that the 
local state is the nurse of character, and a sphere 
where citizens can rise to their stature of moral 
perfection. 

Higher ideas of the State would also do much to 
raise the character of its servants. Were it be- 
lieved that the servants of the State are ministers 
of God, then they would be as carefully chosen as 
the officers of the Church, and they would feel as 


248 DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE STATE 


great a responsibility for the discharge of their 
duties. It may be necessary that politics in 
our country should be conducted along party 
lines, but it is nothing less than a sin that any 
party should be put into competition with the 
State, and that an advantage to a party should 
be snatched to the detriment of the State. Men 
who do such things are traitors to the com- 
monwealth and should be marked for condem- 
nation. The public servant should be indiffer- 
ent to his own interest, and to the interest 
of any section of the people. His eye should be 
ever on the general good, and his devotion be to 
the nation. When such a man arises, no empty 
gabbler nor foolish trifler, no self-opinionative 
crank nor greedy schemer, but a man whose 
words are wise and whose work is thorough, who 
_ loves the people and seeks their highest good, let 
that man be honoured and promoted. For such 
men are the servants of the Highest, and by their 
work the State becomes the Kingdom of God. 


XXI 
IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 


“Tf I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand 
forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let 
my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ; if I prefer 
not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”——Ps. cxxxvii. 
551 Oe 


T has been urged that while our faith revived 
virtues which were languishing unto death 
under the former civilization, and called into 
existence others hitherto unknown, Christianity 
has been a cruel stepmother to one of the noblest 
qualities of Paganism. Chastity and pity have 
come to their full height under the inspiration 
of Christ, humility and self-sacrifice have been 
vindicated by His example ; but patriotism has 
starved. One anticipates the evidence for this 
criticism. Jesus’ own aloofness from the burning 
questions of His day, the cosmopolitan spirit 
of His chief apostle, the comprehensive charter 
of the new kingdom, the trend of the Sermon 


on the Mount, with its enforcement of meekness 
249 


250 IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 


and patience, and the spiritual aims of our 
religion, have all seemed inconsistent with that 
ancient devotion, without scruple and without 
reserve, to the cause of one’s country. This 
suspicion has been fed by the attitude of the 
largest Christian community, which maintains 
itself as a separate kingdom in every State, 
and whose members give precedence to its 
ecclesiastical ruler before the sovereign of their 
country. And also by an extreme school of 
Protestants whose superior and ultra-refined 
spirituality does not allow its disciples to take 
part in spiritual affairs. Pronounced Christians, 
it is supposed, ought to be like those large-minded 
people who are so much concerned with their 
neighbours’ affairs that they are indifferent to 
their own homes, and are so entirely citizens of 
the world that they are citizens of no place in 
particular. One is haunted with the feeling 
that in proportion as people become spiritual 
they cease to be national, and the more they 
think of the world which is to come, the less 
they are concerned about the welfare of the 
world which is, and especially about that portion 
which God has given them for a habitation. The 


IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 251 


charge of lukewarmness towards the State has 
not been made without some reason, and every 
disciple of Jesus ought to settle with his con- 
science the duty of patriotism. 

Certainly it may be frankly admitted that if 
Christianity impoverishes this high virtue which 
has existed from the dawn of nations, and which 
lent an austere glory to the Pagan communities, 
our religion has come short of perfection. For one 
thing it would throw two of our most powerful 
instincts into bitter conflict—our loyalty to the 
body of Christ into which we have been baptized, 
and our loyalty to the community into which 
we have been born. Can there be a more bitter 
calamity in the sphere of conscience than when 
an honest man has to choose between his Chris- 
tianity and his citizenship. It is an intolerable 
dilemma because it is an artificial situation. 
What is the Church in any country but the 
nation acting in a religious capacity ? And what 
is the State but the nation acting in a civil 
capacity. Many noble minds indeed have imagined 
an ideal condition of affairs, when there shall 
be no longer a limited body of religious people 
in a land—the remnant of the Hebrew prophet ; 


252 IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 


but Church and State shall be co-terminous, two 
moods of the same national soul. This Utopia 
is still in the future, but meanwhile let us lay 
it to heart that if the Church be of God, so also 
is the State, and that if any one imagines that 
religion has loosed him from those civic duties 
which were a law of love to the Pagan conscience, 
he really holds that religion is in conflict with 
the order of God. It is not upon this foundation 
of disloyalty to the State that a man is likely 
to rise to the perfection of manhood. If one 
is careless of his family we do not judge it any 
compensation for this disloyalty that he pro- 
fesses to have replaced his home by his city. 
And if a man denies that larger sphere within 
which our separate habitations have found their 
shelter, it is vain for him to boast that he has 
only thrown off his native land for the moment, 
that he may receive her again into his heart, 
together with the ends of the earth, her friends 
and her foes together. Nothing will remove 
the impression that he is the victim of philan- 
thropic cant, and that this pretentious claim 
to humanity arises not from the breadth, but 
from the narrowness of his soul. If a man love 


IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 253 


not his own land which he has seen with all 
his heart, then is it likely that he will love any 
other land which he has not seen, and to which 
he owes no obligation 

Upon the face of it, however, one can hardly 
believe that Christianity could take the side of 
disloyalty when he remembers its lineage. Did 
not our faith spring from the womb of Judaism, 
and is not Hebrew thought the red corpuscles 
in our blood ? Has history produced any patriot 
so unchanging in his remembrance, so heroic 
in his devotion, so proud in his spirit as a Jew ? 
How unparalleled his persecutions! How in- 
vincible his constancy! How unflinching his 
faith in God! How unbounded his charity to 
his brethren! Without a land and with a 
ruined capital, this people remain the most 
cohesive and distinctive nation on the face of 
the earth. Is it credible that this sap should 
bear the fruit of antinationalism in any, or that 
,the patriotism of the prophets should be can- 
celled by the cosmopolitanism of the apostles? 
Is the eloquence of Hebrew statesmen picturing 
the perfect state, and the pathos of Hebrew poets 
lamenting their exile from Jerusalem, to have 


254 IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 


no effect on the Christian consciousness ? Has 
the Hebrew conception of the State no place 
in Christianity, and have the Old Testament 
Scriptures been cancelled ? 

As a matter of fact the most intensely Christian 
nations have been the most national—witness 
the Irish and the Scots, two extremes of rigorous 
and unbending faith. And did not England 
produce in the seventeenth century a_ school 
of Christians who as much as any Hebrew re- 
garded their land as the heritage of God, and 
strove to make their commonwealth a theocracy ? 
People imperfectly acquainted with the Puritans, 
or misjudging them by some of their shambling 
modern representatives, may criticize Puritanism 
for many faults, but they ought not to accuse it 
of want of patriotism. Cromwell, that king 
of men, was not afraid to shed blood to make 
England free within; he was willing to shed 
blood to make England strong without. Never— 
making allowance for the time—were the forces 
of England more efficient by land and sea than 
when Cromwell commanded the army, and 
Blake the fleet ; never was England more quick 
to avenge the oppressed or to aid righteousness. 


IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 255 


In the Puritan the virile patriotism of the Jews 
lived and was glorified. 

What Jesus did for patriotism was not to 
abrogate it, which would have been sorry work 
for one sprung from the loins of the royal house 
of Judah, or to depreciate it and set His Church 
against the State in every century, but to cleanse 
it from impurities, and give it a nobler direction. 
With His spiritual ideals, Jesus could not abide 
the cynical worldliness of the Sadducean aris- 
tocracy, who were content with the degradation 
of the nation so long as their Temple taxes were 
left untouched ; with His broad vision He could 
only protest against the bitter fanaticism of 
the Pharisees, whose teaching tended to make a 
Jew every man’s enemy. From first to last He 
loved His nation with that discriminating passion 
which made the prophets both Israel’s defenders 
and Israel’s judges. He did not rejoice to see 
the Roman soldiers in His country; but He 
sorrowed far more to see the common people 
despised. He did not undervalue freedom ; but 
He considered it was not possible till the rulers of 
the people had overcome their own sins. What 
Jesus desired was not a hopeless revolt against 


256 IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 


Rome, which would only mean disaster; what 
He longed for was a revival of faith and morals. 
A degenerate nation could never be free, a re- 
generate nation could never be enslaved. 

Jesus rendered two services to patriotism, 
and one was to inspire it with a noble mind. 
It can never be enough for a Christian citizen 
that each census gives a larger population than 
the last, that the savings banks are congested 
with money, that the volume of trade is swollen, 
that the rate of wages is rising, that the arms 
of the country have prevailed over foreign foes, 
or that we have annexed another province. For 
he knows that a land may be populous, and rich, 
and strong, and feared, whose people are miserable, 
and whose dependencies are spoiled. He has 
been taught that a nation only is blessed when 
its homes are full of peace and its power is used 
for righteousness. Patriotism must labour for 
the good of all and the injury of none, to build 
up a nation in faith towards God, and love towards 
man. Jesus warned His contemporaries that if 
they persisted in their unreasoning fanaticism, 
the end would be a bath of blood; and can any 
one doubt that if the Jews had listened to His 


IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 257 


voice they would have possessed their own land to- 
day, and their glory would have had no shadow ? 
The tears of Jesus over Jerusalem were the 
pledge and measure of His patriotism. 

Jesus has also taught us by His charity to 
believe that men of different views may have 
an equally good intention, and that there may 
be politics which will rise above parties. If 
it be the case that the government of a country 
is best carried on by parties, then every Christian 
should lay it to heart that no party has ever 
existed without including men of undeniable 
patriotism, and without rendering service to 
the commonwealth. If indeed any party should 
claim to have the monopoly of honesty it is self- 
condemned: it is the party not ofnationalism, 
but of Pharisaism. Hampden may be a more 
familiar name in our annals, but Lord Falkland 
was as sincere a patriot of his country. One 
can easily mention statesmen of our day who 
have taken opposite sides in our controversy, 
but one would find it difficult to assign the palm 
of integrity. Nothing can be more unworthy 
than to impute bad motives to fellow citizens 
who attempt the good of the commonwealth 

ie 17 


258 IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 


by other means than ours, nothing more ungrate- 
ful than to belittle the labour of any who serve 
the State with a true heart. 

One, however, infers from the spirit of Chris- 
tianity that the Church as represented by her 
ministers ought not to meddle with the machinery 
of politics. History proves that whenever a 
Church has identified herself with any side she 
has done her own interests a grievous injury, 
and flung away a golden opportunity. Does 
not every one now see that it was amistake for 
the Church of England to cast in her lot with 
the Stuarts, and for the Church of Scotland to 
take up arms for the same ill-fated house. Both 
Churches repented this unfortunate policy when 
they were humbled under Cromwell’s hand. 
Will the Churches lay the lesson of the past to 
heart, and be wise not after but before the event ? 
The division of the political world is justified by 
experience, but if it came to pass that the Christian 
Church should be assigned to parties so that a 
Conformist must be a Conservative and a Non- 
conformist a Radical, then our children will alone 
be able to estimate the calamity. 

It is not for the Church of Christ to play upon 


IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 259 


the ambition of parties, offering and receiving 
bribes which are not less binding because they 
do not happen to be pecuniary, or to agitate the 
state for the passing of laws. But surely it is 
within her commission to feed the spirit of 
nationality in the hearts of English people, 
teaching them that as God trained the Jews 
apart, that they might give His law to the world, 
so has He placed us in our island home that we 
may dispense justice to distant nations. Why 
should we not believe that if a Hebrew prophet 
had a right to call Israel God’s people, this Britain 
of ours is also the nation of God. And why 
should not our prophets rebuke our people for 
their sins and comfort them in their sorrows 
with the authority of Amos andofIsaiah? This 
brave note has been heard in the voices of the 
author of Piers Ploughman, and Wycliffe, that 
reformer before the Reformation, and Latimer 
with his shrewd English speech, and Sir Thomas 
More, that fine public soul, and Cromwell, our | 
uncrowned king, as well as Charles Kingsley, 
and Frederick Robertson, and Thomas Carlyle, 
and John Ruskin of our own time. Such men 
carried the sorrow of the nation in their hearts, 


260 IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 


and told the people plainly their sins; they 
called upon their countrymen to believe in God, 
and they dared to imagine great things for 
England. Why not? If the prophets dwelt 
with a proud memory on the works which God 
did in the ancient time, the right arm of the 
Most High has not been hidden in English history. 
If God had not been our defence in the sixteenth 
century there had been no English nation, and 
if He had not put a heart in us a century ago 
we should have become a province of France. 
Our history affords evidence of the faithfulness 
of God as convincing as any to be found in Hebrew 
annals, and it is a provincialism of faith to seek 
for the living God in the forays of the Judges, 
and not in the battles of the Peninsular war. 
Pitt and Wellington were more distinguished 
servants of God than Jephthah and Samson, 
and if those merciless fighters rendered service 
to humanity by smiting the decadent Canaanite 
stock, we served the cause of righteousness in 
Napoleon’s day. What nation in modern times 
has established so many colonies, explored so 
many lands, rendered such services to civilization, 
or set before the world so perfect an example 


IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM 261 


of liberty ? Will not any people which comes 
under our rule attain, so far as may be possible, 
to knowledge and prosperity. Unto the Jew 
it was granted of God to reveal His will; it 
has been granted to our nation to offer unto 
the ends of the earth freedom and order. Is 
it not, therefore, becoming that our children 
should be taught the names of those notable 
servants of God—prophets, statesmen, soldiers, 
travellers, who built up the fabric of the Em- 
pire, and also the mighty works wrought by our 
fathers. Above all, ought not the Church of 
Christ to hold up before the imagination that 
high temper of patriotism which places our 
fatherland before all other nations, and the State 
above all parties, which seeks for no changes 
save those which bind all classes together in 
peace, and which only covets power to use it 
for the defence of the heritage committed by 
the Eternal to our charge ? 


XXII 
THE GLORY OF THE Gim@ 


“And I John saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, 
coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as 
a bride adorned for her husband.’’—Rev. xxi. 2. 


HEN one is in a healthy state of mind 

he must love the country with its wide 
distances, its varied colours, its wealth of animal 
life, its untainted air, its simple living; and he 
must resent the masterful aggression of the 
city as it covers the greenery with packed streets 
of monotonous houses, and replaces the quiet- 
ness with the weary din of traffic. One almost 
hates the city for a crueller wrong, and a sadder 
waste, because of the people it has devoured, 
who came up healthy, contented, simple-minded, 
and grew stunted, restless, bitter, each man 
pushing his own way, and knowing not his neigh- 
bours’ names, wearing out his years in grinding 
toil, or flinging them away in riotous pleasure. 
The city seems to be like the fabled monster 


262 


THE GLORY OF THE CITY 263 


which lived upon a tribute of young life, because it 
is ever devouring our best and filling its shrunken 
veins with the red blood of the country. There 
are hours in every man’s life when he longs to 
escape from the crowd and turmoil of the city, 
when he regards its problems with despair. 

So far as the country mood moves townsfolk 
to simplicity, it is not unwholesome, but it must 
not be carried too far, lest we lose touch with 
facts. The city is the inevitable result of a law 
which from the beginning has been gathering 
men into communities, and making those com- 
munities the centres of national life, so that 
the progress from barbarism to civilization is 
marked by the increase of the city. Cities may 
be overgrown and the forcing bed of many social 
evils; they may also alienate people of simple 
tastes and homely ways, but the city can neither 
be obliterated nor reduced. It grows and asserts 
itself, and to the city runs ever more swiftly 
the tide of life. Establish a pastoral community 
with vast stretches of country, and the city 
will rise and dominate the land, till Melbourne 
be Victoria, and Pretoria the Transvaal, and 
San Francisco be California, and Chicago the 


264 THE GLORY OF THE Gite 


middle West. When any tendency is a factor in 
the development of life, then it must be accepted 
as a law which may be abused, but which 
cannot be annulled. The city is as much of God 
as the country, and has done at least as much 
for the race. 

If the country has been loved by patient silent 
folk, whom neither poverty nor hardship could 
drive away, the city has won the passionate 
devotion of many elect souls. Isaiah’s pride 
in Jerusalem struggled through his shame over 
her sin; Charles Lamb was never happy away 
from London, and did not feel himself safe except 
upon her streets; every nook of Boston and 
every incident of her history were dear to Oliver 
Wendell Holmes; Edinburgh was Scott’s own 
romantic town, and St. Paul’s love for Tarsus 
was only exceeded by his ambition to see the 
capital of the world. Asa countryman is satisfied 
with the flowers in his garden, a field of ripe 
corn, the sound of running water and the tints 
of autumn, so the man of the city loves its 
crowded market places, its ceaseless stream 
of people, its changing moods of fierce endeavour 
and sparkling pleasure, even its shadows, its 


———— os 


THE GLORY OF THE CITY 265 


smoke, its mixed noises, its pungent odours. 

Nor is it difficult to understand how the city 
seizes the imagination of men and makes them 
her servants. Whatever be the sweet perfections 
of the country, it is the city which inspires the 
workers in every department of thought and 
action, except the highest reaches of religion, 
where our Lord walks with His apostles in Galilee. 
Not only do the masters of invention and com- 
merce, the rulers of politics and high affairs, 
make the city their dwelling place; thither as by 
an irresistible fascination drift even the poets 
and artists. Painters should surely be able to 
resist the witchery of the city and be loyal to 
the country which feeds their genius, but Blake 
with his visions must needs live in London where 
fashion beat upon his closed door, and Millet, 
who of all French artists has most perfectly 
represented peasant life, was near to death in 
Paris. There are poets like Wordsworth whose 
souls flourish in the silence of the country ; there 
are others like Browning who only come to their 
height amid the motion of the city. They are 
quickened in that electrical atmosphere which 
is charged with new ideas, quick criticism, stirring 


266 THE GLORY OF THE “Citi® 


ambitions, gigantic schemes, fierce contrasts, 
where all the comedy and the tragedy of life 
are placed upon the stage. One returns from 
the country with wistful regret, charmed and 
rested, but dull of thought, and disinclined for 
action. One has no sooner disappeared within 
the shadow of the smoke, and been caught by 
the whirl of city life, than the mind awakes, 
and the passion for work takes possession of the 
soul. We mourn the sacrifice of bright lives 
which have been worn out by the exacting 
demands of the city, the men and women who have 
died before their time. It is the tragedy of the 
city. We might also mourn the men who have 
come to nothing in the country, who have ceased 
to think and do, and have grown old, like dumb, 
contented animals. It is the tragedy of the 
country. After all it is where life is keenest, 
its calls heaviest, and its rewards most splendid, 
that as a rule the warp and woof of the richest 
patterns are woven. St. John the Divine 
was a countryman reared on the shores of the 
Galilean lake amid a wealth of flowers and fruit, 
but when he thought of the life that was to be 
when the former things had passed away, it 


THE GLORY OF THE CITY 267 


was not a lonely Garden of Eden which opened 
before his vision, but the New Jerusalem with 
its streets of gold and its gates of pearl. 

Among the various influences which make 
for the good of the national life, none ought 
therefore to be more carefully fostered than 
civic patriotism. How jealous a country town 
is of its name; with what affectionate memory 
it cherishes every past glory, and with what 
minute interest it follows every citizen who 
goes into the greater world. If one be so minded 
he may jest at provincial vanity, but that is 
shallow mockery. It is this local esprit de corps 
which sustains municipal life, invests its offices 
with dignity, elevates the character of its people, 
and secures the well-being of the little com- 
munity. When any town has lost its pride it 
has begun to decay, and that means so much 
loss to the empire, for as the spirit of an army 
depends upon the tone of the regiments, so the 
life of the empire is fed by the life of the towns. 
One sometimes fears that the spirit of municipal 
patriotism does not beat with proportionate 
strength in the heart of the greater cities, and 
that in this matter the little towns put them 


268 THE GLORY OF THE CITY 


to shame. If this be so the cities are the losets, 
and it would be well for their inhabitants to add 
to their enterprise and intelligence a greater 
measure of civic pride. 

It is not enough, however, to cherish our muni- 
cipal glory, we must be prepared to take our 
part in municipal service. One does not admire 
that citizen whose thoughts are raised above 
the institutions which have blessed him and the 
interests of the men who are his neighbours. 
For any one simply tolook after his own affairs, 
and to have no part in the common life except 
to pay its taxes and criticise its administration, 
is disloyalty, both to the place of his dwelling 
and to the law of Christ. That city is fortunate ” 
which has many “ public souls,’ and where all 
the people share the burden of citizenship. That 
city is in a perilous state where any large class 
abstains from local politics, and regards them 
with contempt. Men of large affairs and cultured 
leisure may belittle municipal duties and con- 
sider it a condescension to take a seat in the 
local parliament. It is cheap dignity, it is selfish 
policy. If men without broad views or strenuous 
ideals have grasped local government, whose 


THE GLORY OF THE CITY 269 


blame was it? Partly no doubt theirs who 
seized places above their capacity and used 
their power for private ends, but largely it is 
also the blame of abler men who stood by care- 
less and contemptuous. If mistakes have 
been made in the administration of cities by 
which improvements have been hindered, and 
sectional interests have been fostered, the dis- 
appointment of good hopes must be laid at the 
door of those who, through social exclusiveness 
or the dearth of public spirit, refuse to touch 
the work of the commonwealth with the tip of 
their fingers. ; 

No honour is too generous for men who with 
every qualification of intelligence, and every 
reason to safeguard their leisure, have entered 
a city council with no other purpose than to 
make their dwelling-place more like unto the 
city of God. If the number of such men should 
fail, local politics would pass into the hands of 
professional managers, manipulating affairs for 
their own aggrandisement, and the city would 
be ruled by those with no qualification except 
obedience to the political machine. Were that 
day ever to come, as it has in America, our cities 


270 THE GLORY OF THE CIiTy 


would be handed over to the government of 
persons in whose public integrity we had no 
confidence, and with whom in private life we 
would refuse to associate. 

No apology need be offered to the most dis- 
tinguished citizen for asking him to take his 
share in the government of the commonwealtk. 
A city is a self governing state within the empire, 
in many cases with a larger population than 
some of our colonies, and interests more im- 
portant than some foreign nations. It exercises 
a direct influence upon social life such as the 
Imperial Parliament might well envy, for a 
strong man can carry through the local Commons 
a beneficent measure in a year, while in the 
national Commons, he might fail after a life- 
time. With every year the scope of municipal 
government widens and the responsibility of 
municipal rulers increases; with every year 
the welfare of the country depends less upon 
the House of Commons and more upon the local 
council. 

There are two kinds of revivals—the spiritual, 
which deals with the individual, and the social, 
which regenerates the community. We have 


THE GLORY) ORV THE. CITY 271 


had spiritual revivals in the past, we are now 
at the beginning of a social revival. A change 
has come over the religious consciousness, and a 
man is more anxious about the salvation of 
others than of himself. The father when he 
was dying was chiefly concerned about his own 
soul, the son is anxious about the welfare of his 
wife and children. [If it is going to be well with 
them he leaves himself without further question 
in the hands of the eternal love. If one pleads 
for the building of a church it is hard to raise 
the money; if he pleads for an open-air fund it 
comes in readily. Missions are most acceptable 
to-day when they care for the body as well as 
the soul, and set themselves to relieve the suffer- 
ings of women and children. People have ceased 
to care about theology, but they are ready to 
hear the Sermon on the Mount. They are 
wearying of arguments regarding Christ’s person, 
but they have an open mind to what Christ 
said we should do with our fellow men. 

May the day not have come to us of which 
Isaiah spake to Jerusalem in the beginning of his 
prophecy, when he preached his social gospel ? 
May not God have a controversy with us because, 


272 THE GLORY OF THE Gi 


though our theology be correct, and our worship 
reverent, we have not done our duty by the poor 
and needy ? What if God be calling us, not to 
build more churches in the cities, but to see to 
the houses in which His children are living ; not 
to spend more money on organs and choirs, 
but to relieve the miserable and helpless. Should 
not the Church of Christ use her influence more 
directly for social ends: to settle as far as possible 
the people on the land, that we may have a con- 
tented and strong country population ; to secure 
in the cities that every man for whom Christ 
died shall have his own house where he can live 
in comfort and decency with his wife and children; 
to abolish the gross temptations of the city— 
the public-hovses at every corner of the poorest 
districts, and the scenes in Piccadilly Circus ; and 
to bring it to pass that every man who is willing 
to do honest work shall have a fair wage. When, 
according to Isaiah, we relieve the oppressed 
and judge the fatherless, then, and no sooner, 
shall the promise be fulfilled, “Though your 
sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow, 
though they be red like crimson they shall be 
as wool.” 


THE GLORY OF THE CITY 273 


It is good that a man build his own home in 
righteousness, and protect it with peace. He 
must have regard also to the commonwealth of 
which he is a part, and by which he has been 
blessed. It is needful a man care for his own 
soul and enrich it with good things; he must 
remember also the multitude at his doors who 
are labouring and heavy laden. It is not enough 
so for us to live that at last we shall attain Heaven 
in another world; we must strive to bring 
Heaven to the city where we live in this world 
by filling it with health and gladness, with the 
knowledge and love of God. According to the 
words of an English prophet :— 


I will not cease from mental fight, 

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand 
Till we have built Jerusalem 

In England’s green and pleasant land. 


L.F, 18 


XXIII 
. THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 
Not discerning the Lord’s body.””—1 Cor. xi. 29. 


HEN the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper 

was celebrated in the Church of Corinth, 

there was a double presence of the Master, and it 
was because the Corinthian Christians discerned 
neither kind that they earned St. Paul’s censure, 
and ate and drank condemnation to themselves. 
Before our Lord left this world and ascended 
unto the Father He promised that He would be 
always with His people. He would depart from 
sight and be realized by faith; absent in the 
flesh, He would be present in the Spirit. As the 
spirit of a great man still breathes in the words 
he spake, and awakes in every crisis of the nation 
he made, so, but in a more intimate degree, is 
Christ with His Church. Wherever two or three 
are gathered together in His name He is in their 
midst and gives His benediction of peace. When- 
ever His evangel is preached He wields His 


274 


THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 275 


mystic power and draws men unto Himself. He 
moves before His disciples in the royal way of 
the Holy Cross, constraining them to service, to 
suffering and to death, and amid the innumerable 
providences of common life He guides and sup- 
ports the soul. Chiefly, however, is Christ near 
us in the sacrament of baptism, when parents 
place their children almost visibly in His hands ; 
and in the Holy Communion, when those whom 
He has redeemed show forth His undying love. 
It has been the misfortune of Christian people 
to differ widely about the doctrine of the Sacra- 
ment. It has been their happiness to find that 
under many forms the Master has revealed Him- — 
self to the faith of His disciples. It was because 
those Corinthians treated this sacred rite as if it 
were a common supper-table, and did not wish 
to see the Holy Grail, that they were guilty of pro- 
fanity and come under a heavy judgment. Not 
discerning the Lord’s body in the bread and wine, 
they denied the spiritual presence of Christ. 

But our Lord was also present in that room 
after a more visible fashion than with the symbols 
of His body and blood. While a few rich men 
enjoyed the meal which preceded the Sacrament in 


276 THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 


the early Church, and was called on this occasion, 
surely as by irony, the love-feast, others sat at 
the same table poor and starving. They were 
humble persons whom Christ had called into His 
Kingdom, or whose souls Christ had made free. 
One had escaped for a brief hour from bondage 
to celebrate his spiritual emancipation ; another 
had left his squalid room to realize his heavenly 
citizenship ; a third came with tears undried to 
confirm his faith in the life of the departed. 
They had brought neither meat nor drink with 
them, for they were as poor as Christ had been 
Himself; they could only huddle themselves 
together, feeling their very presence an intru- 
sion and their misery an offence, while the eye of 
some full-fed Christian swept over them with 
insolent disdain between the passing of the 
wine-cup. It was amazing blindness. Had their 
prosperous brethren never heard from the gospel 
tradition how Christ went to dinner with the 
rich Phdrisee, and received neither oil for His 
head nor water for His feet ? How, on the night 
of the first Lord’s Supper, when no one else would 
discharge the task, He washed His disciples’ 
feet with His own hands, how He had not where 


— 


THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 277 


to lay His head during His life, and at last was 
laid in a stranger’s tomb? One is amazed that 
no subtle suggestion of Christ touched their 
minds, that no impulse came to these supercilious 
Corinthians, moving them to rise and serve 
their poorer brethren. 

One of the most delightful stories of antiquity 
describes how Ulysses, after his long wanderings 
and sore toil, returned at length to his own home. 
He came not as his friends had last seen him, nor 
as he really was. He wore the appearance of 
age, and was disguised as a beggar; unknown 
by friend or foe, he sat in the lowest place and 
was neglected at his own board. Two only 
recognized him in spite of every change—his dog, 
by that instinct of affection which is often surer 
than reason; the other his nurse, who knew 
him when she washed his feet and saw the scar 
which the wild boar had made as Ulysses followed 
the chase on Mount Parnassus. It was in this 
fashion Christ came to His own house and to 
His friends at Corinth. Not as a great and wise 
man, but dressed in a slave’s worn garment, 
with a gaunt hungry face and the marks of fetters 
on His body. This was the Christ that crept 


278 THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 


timidly into the Upper Room of Corinth. If 
the rich Corinthians had really loved Him with 
even the affection of a dog or a servant they 
would never have been deceived. If they had 
waited on Him in the person of those poor fellow- 
Christians, they would have seen His wounds ; 
but in their selfish satisfaction and in their con- 
tempt they overlooked and despised the Lord. 
Without any doubt and apart from any doctrine 
they had the body and blood of Christ within 
reach of their hands, and they discerned Him 
not. So they insulted the body of Christ. 

No one can read the Gospels without learning 
that Christ was not only pleased to wear human 
flesh but that He identified Himself with the 
humblest. He was born of a village maiden, 
and afterwards worked as a carpenter. His first 


public act was to mingle with sinners in the — 


Jordan, His last to be crucified between two 
thieves ; if a man were cast from the synagogue 
Christ sought him out, and if any class were 
ostracised Christ threw in His lot with them. 
One never links Christ’s name with wealth and 
palaces, it rather suggests the friendless and the 
miserable. His connexion with the poor was more 


THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 279 


than an accidental association, it was a deliber- 
ate intention ; it was not that He loved others 
less, it was because the need of the poor was 
greater. Christ foresaw two things clearly, the 
demand of the weary and heavy-laden world, 
and the devotion that would gather round Him- 
self. So He brought it to pass that the service 
ready to be given Him should be rendered to the 
suffering world. When He incarnates Himself 
afresh in the body of every one who is in straits, 
and assures us in His most solemn parables that 
whatever we do to the hungry, the thirsty, the 
stranger, the sick, and the captive, is done to 
Him, He endows the unfortunate with an inex- 
haustible inheritance. By one stroke He makes 
them the heirs of the deepest gratitude which 
the human heart has ever known, and secures 
for them all we would do for Himself. They 
are now His body, over which the precious oint- 
ment has to be poured. 

Sacred art loved to depict the Pieta, when 
the body of Christ, which had been worn out in 
service, was taken down from the Cross and 
made ready for burial. St. John, his friend, 
holds the drooping head, and Mary Magdalene 


280 THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 


bends over the weary feet, which once more she 
washes with her tears, this time not from dust 
but from blood ; while the Virgin looks into the 
face which for the first time does not respond to 
her love. That happened once, that happened 
long ago, that will never happen again, for He 
who was dead is alive for evermore, with all 
power in Heaven and in earth. His heavenly 
body is beyond the reach of the nails and the 
spear, it is in the midst of the throne,a Lamb as 
He once was slain. What happens every day 
is that Christ’s earthly body is attacked and 
wounded, stripped and left by the wayside, 
bleeding—sometimes in our great cities, where 
men and women are perishing for lack of bread, 
or for lack of love ; sometimes where Christians 
are persecuting and hating one another; some- 
times in our homes, where we neglect those who 
need our help, and wound those we ought to 
heal. Happy is the man who does not pass by nor 
close his eyes, who has a pitiful heart and a ready 
hand, and a discernment of Christ. It matters 
not whether he knows much or professes much ; 
he may be neither priest nor Leyite, only a 
Samaritan, but he has discerned the Lord’s body. 


THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 28r 


Religious literature, as well as religious art, 
has done its best to embody this truth, not in 
pictures, but in parables. A sick man comes 
to a poor woman’s cottage, and asks for shelter. 
She takes him in, although she has very little 
for herself and her children. She nurses and 
cares for him, and one morning finds that he is 
gone. But the room in which he lay is full of 
light ; and she knows that the sick man was Jesus. 
A little child stands trembling on the edge of a 
roaring torrent and is afraid to cross, when a 
good monk takes him on his back and enters 
the stream. The weight grows heavier and the 
current stronger, but the brave heart toils on, 
and when exhausted reaches the other bank. 
Christopher receives the benediction of the Lord, 
who dwells in little children. St. Francis meets 
a leper on the road and gives him alms, and then 
feeling an excess of pity in his heart turns back 
and kisses him. A minute later the saint looks 
across the open plain to see what has become of 
the unfortunate, but there is no leper anywhere 
to be seen. Then he knew that he had pitied 
and kissed his Master. An abbot is asked to 
redeem a widow’s only son from captivity, and 


282 THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 


is so moved by her tears that he robs the altar of 
its silver candlesticks. and places them in her 
hands. Then he goes in the evening to confess 
what he has done and to ask forgiveness, if so 
be that he has sinned. As he prays before the 
altar a light shines round about him, and when 
he looks up, behold! the candlesticks are stand- 
ing in their place ; but now they are solid gold, 
and the face of Christ above them is full of tender- 
ness. So they discern the Lord’s body. 

“Once a Christian,’ said Lacordaire, “‘ the 
- world did not vanish from my eyes, it rather 
assumed larger proportions, as I myself did. I 
began to see therein a noble sufferer needing 
help. I could imagine nothing comparable to 
the happiness of ministering to it under the eye 
of God, with the help of the Cross and the Gospel 
of Christ!’ That is a just and balanced state- 
ment of the theory and practice of Christian 
service. Discover Christ’s body in the world 
around, and you transfigure the world. It is 
not then so many people to be used, or endured, 
or criticized, or injured, or studied, or put in 
statistics ; it is so many to be served—from the 
slow child and the hot-tempered person in your 


THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 283 


own house, to the desolate life next door, and 
the multitude which has lost hope. The body 
of Christ is not merely in the sacrament on the 
Holy Table, it is in the hospitals and in the slums ; 
it isin the persons of the poor and the outcasts 
of the street ; it is in the oppressed and in the 
friendless. In them Christ waits to be minis- 
tered unto every day, and our ministry is the 
measure of our love. The sin of the Church has 
been the isolation from the poor outside her 
borders, and the contempt of the poor within 
her borders. Whatever excuse may be offered, 
or however difficult the problem may be, it cannot 
be right that some of Christ’s people should be 
so well housed and others so miserably; that 
Christ’s body in the Sacrament should be in so 
fair a building and Christ’s body in the poor 
should be in a hovel. 

The conscience of the Church is growing tender 
on this matter, and we are not so comfortable as 
the rich Corinthians were; but if the Church is 
to rise to her vocation she must not only have an 
enlightened conscience but a tender heart. There 
_ has always been a danger of separating between 
Christ and His body, discerning the Lord but 


284 THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 


not His body, or discerning the body and not 
the Lord. No love has ever touched the human 
heart with so fine a passion as the devotion to 
the crucified and the risen Christ. It has been 
the spring of Christian art and poetry, of sacri- 
fices and martyrdom. But it has been apt in 
some ages to end with itself, and to grow intro- 
spective and to lose itself in sentiment, so we have 
had the imitation of Christ without the service 
of Christ, Christ without His body. No practical 
movement again for the elevation and redemp- 
tion of human life has been more hopeful or 
more efficacious than that of Christian charity ; 
but in our day there is the danger that it should 
begin and end in action and have no spring of 
emotion. If the service of man is separated 
from the love of Christ, then it will grow hard, 
mechanical, unspiritual, and finally will fail as a 
plant without a root, as a river whose lake has 
dried up. It is the river of Christian service 
which has made green the wastes of human 
suffering, so far as its waters reach, but that 
river sprang from the Cross and the wounds of 
Jesus. It is a river whose water is mingled with 
blood, and therein lies its perennial strength. 


THE BODILY PRESENCE OF CHRIST 285 


It was for the love of Christ St. Philip Neri gave 
himself to the care of the lepers ; it was because 
they were living in the fellowship of Christ that 
the mystics of the middle ages—the “ friends of 
God,” as they were called—took charge of the 
poor. It was from Christ Wilberforce received 
his inspiration to deliver the slaves, and Shaftes- 
bury his commission to work for the poor of 
England. What we need is not more statistics, 
or more committees, or more blue-books, or more 
money, what we need is more personal compassion 
and more personal sacrifice. When our hearts 
have been melted in the furnace of the love of 
Christ our lives will flow forth in service ; when 
we are in daily fellowship with our crucified Lord, 
we shall never fail to discern His suffering body. 

For a tear is an intellectual thing ; 

And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King; 


And the bitter groan of a martyr’s woe 
Is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow. 


XXIV 
THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 


“Verily Isay unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done 
it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have 
done it unto Me.”’—Matt. xxv. 40. 
T is frequently pointed out that the sense of 
sin is decreasing, and for this charge there 
is considerable evidence. Confession to God has 
not the former accent of self-abasement and of 
personal guilt. People do not sing the hymns of 
penitence with the same reality; a verse like 
this seems to strike an unreal note to the modern 
mind— 
I am all unrighteousness, 
False and full of sin I am, 
and we weaken before an older and more strenuous 
hymn— 
Behold ! I was shapen in iniquity, 
And in sin did my mother conceive me. 
Literature is sombre to-day with the shadow of 
sin, but it is not so much repentance towards 


God as the nemesis of broken law, and while the 
286 


THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 287 


individual conscience is more sensitive about 
certain things than the conscience of the past, 
it shows very little of what the Friends call 
“contrition.”” Were the worship of the Church 
to be tuned to the key of personal consciousness 
it would have to be largely re-cast, and one 
hazards the guess that many people are silenced 
in worship just at the point where their fathers 
were most intense. 

If this change in the attitude of devotion 
really means that our generation is indifferent 
to the distinction between right and wrong, and 
that the individual of to-day considers himself 
at liberty to do as he pleases, both with himself 
and his fellow men, then every one who believes 
in righteousness would have grave reason to des- 
pair. The decay of the moral sense is a calamity 
of the first order. When a person is without 
censcience, then any moral appeal to him is 
futile, and against him organized law itself is 
helpless. If there were many such people, the 
bonds of society would be dissolved. 

Is it not possible, however, that the sense of 
sin has changed its form, and that the conscience 
of to-day, if not so tender. on one side, is far 


288 THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 


quicker on another? It may be granted that 
good people do not analyze their feelings towards 
God with the scrupulous care of former times, and 
do not: charge themselves with the sublimated 
sins of defective emotion; that they do not 
describe their shortcomings unto God in terms 
of such humiliation, and that they are not afraid 
lest in loving some creature they should rouse 
the sensitive jealousy of God. We are not 
to-day saddened by the morbid child’s religion 
of the former good books, nor by the pitiable 
diaries of self-tortured souls. It is to be remem- 
bered at the same time that our pious fathers 
would themselves have been ashamed to display 
the barbaric jealousy they considered it right to 
ascribe to God, and that while they included the 
whole range of human transgression in their con- 
fessions they would have been very indignant 
if their neighbours had accused them of a single 
sin. Side by side, however, with this decay in 
the consciousness of personal offence against 
God, there is a sense of obligation towards our 
neighbour which is distinctly in advance of any- 
thing known to our fathers. Prosperous men 
would consider it a disgrace to die enormously 


q 


THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 289 


rich, and the conviction is growing that after a 
man has made just provision for his wife and 
children, he should hold his means in stewardship 
for society. Employers of labour are solicitous 
about the condition of their working people, 
and are openly ashamed when it is discovered 
that they have been treating them badly. Per- 
sons with great privileges are in many cases 
sharing them with their less fortunate brethren, 
and the whole community is assuming a moral 
responsibility for the disease, vice, misery and 
ignorance of the masses. Under the influence 
of this new spirit sins which before were unidenti- 
fied and unimagined are thrown into relief, and 
arrest the public conscience. The sense of sin 
against God as a transcendent person has weak- 
ened, the sense of sin against the great human 
body of which we are a part has awakened. 
Repentance is not dead, but it is now towards our 
neighbour whether in our own home or at the 
other end of the city. Social repentance is the 
latest development of the moral sense, and the 
conviction of social guilt was never so keen in 
any age. 

Are we not apt to isolate these two moral 


LF. 19 


290 THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 


facts—the decay of the sense of sin against God, 
and the increase of the sense of sin against man ? 
At least, we forget to correlate them ; we assume 
that there is no unity in the religious life. By 
one set of acts we commit, as it were, divine sin, 
and by another human sin, or we render so many 
acts of divine service and so many acts of human 
service. One age is strong in the divine depart- 
ment of the religious life, and another age is 
strong in the human department. So we speak 
of those who do their duty to God and somewhat 
fail in their service to man, and others who do | 
their duty well to man but are negligent in their 
service of God. Which is less than reasonable, 
and leads one to ask whether the conventional 
division of the law into two tables—love to God, 
and love toman—is more than a handy arrange- 
ment. Whether in other words you can hurt a 
man without hurting God, or can honour a man 
without honouring God. As knowledge grows, 
does it not always point towards unity ? Moses 
gave ten commandments, Jesus condensed them 
into two in His teaching, and before He died He 
reduced the two to one, bidding His disciples 
love one another. Ought we not to take a pro- 


THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD or 


founder view and regard social sin as an offence 
against the order of the universe, or in other — 
words against God Himself and social service as a 
homage to God. Is God a distant and isolated 
deity outside His own creation, whom we do not 
touch when we touch a creature, whom we can- 
not serve when we serve a creature, whom we 
can only approach in the worship of the Church, 
and with whom we can only meet in the sanctuary 
of our souls? Ought we not to believe that God 
is within this creation so that one cannot separate 
any part of it from Him in whom every part 
lives and moves and has its being ? Is He not in 
the world around us, and is He not in our fellow 
men? Is not the hem of His garment within 
reach of us all? Can we injure a little child 
and not injure Him? Can we help a man in 
the straits of life and not help Him ? 

Ought we to hesitate which idea of God to 
accept as our working principle in life? Is not 
the distant God a mechanical conception, and 
an obsolete deism? Is not the indwelling God 
a convincing idea and the religion of Jesus? Are 
we not taught by the Incarnation, which is the 
central doctrine of Christianity and the crown 


292 THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 


of revelation, that God is within human life— 
speaking through human voices, working by 
human hands, weeping human tears, rejoicing 
with human joys? Was not Christ ever preaching 
this truth, and did He not conclude His Gospel 
by declaring in His parable of the judgment 
that whatsoever aman did of good tohis fellows, 
was done to the Judge, and whatsoever he did of 
evil was done against the Judge? Within the 
sphere of Christian thought there is only one 
life, one love, one faith, one sin. We speak of 
the solidarity of man; since the Incarnation we 
should speak of the solidarity of man and God. 
The truth that if you sin against man you sin 
against God is impressively stated in the most 
intense hymn of penitence ever written, the 
fifty-first Psalm. Whoever the writer was he 
had commited some great sin—a sin red with 
blood and black with lust. He was ashamed 
of himself and was broken-hearted. Some fellow 
creature had suffered cruelly at his hands, but 
when he went to the root of the matter he realized 
that his sin had touched God Himself, and that 
no creature could be insulted without wounding 
its creator. ‘‘ Against Thee,” he said, “ against 


THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 293 


Thee only have I sinned.” If this be true, then 
it follows on the other side that if any one helps 
a human being in body or in soul, that person 
has helped God. If only the Psalmist had dealt 
righteously by that man or that woman, he had 
been able to say, “‘ Thee only have I served.” All 
service, as well as all injury, ends in God, and is 
done to God. 

But some one may ask, where does this lead 
us? Is it meant that if one loves his neighbour 
after an unselfish fashion, say a mother her 
child, or a man his friend, that so far he is loving 
God? Certainly, just as if he were ill-treating 
any one he was sinning against God. But the 
motive ? What if a person should say, I never 
thought of God, or should go on to say I do not 
know God? Or in the furthest extreme, I am 
no friend to God; there are reasons in my life 
why I almost hate God. Still the truth holds 
good, this agnostic in his ignorance, or his enmity, 
cannot escape God. He cannot love without 
pleasing God, and he cannot do good without 
worshipping God. Verify the truth in human 
life, which surely is the illustration and test of 
our relation to God. Suppose some one do service 


294 THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 


to my son in a distant country, helping him 
in the hour of sorrow, or standing by him in the 
moment of danger, that man becomes my 
friend, and is dear to me. If he should land in 
this country and be in straits, I will hasten to his 
aid, and I would be ashamed not to recognize 
him. Do you say he did nothing to me? He 
did it to my son, and it is the same as if he did it 
tome. Do you say he knew nothing about me ? 
He knew about my son. Suppose, to make the 
illustration complete, that, although he dealt 
kindly with my son, he does not like me, and 
that there has been a quarrel between us. 
There may have been a quarrel, but there is none 
now. On his side if he chooses he may keep it 
up, but on my side it is closed. Not only do I 
forget that he thought ill of me; I put it to his 
credit that, thinking ill of me, he has done so well 
by my son. If a person believes in God, and 
serves his fellow men, he does a good work, and 
he does it unto God. If he is not able to believe 
in God and yet serves his fellow men, behold in 
even harder circumstances, and with less encour- 
agement, he has served God. 

This truth should bring liberty to two opposite 


THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 295 


people, and the first is a believer with a scrupulous 
conscience. There are Christians who are afraid 
of letting their heart go, and pouring forth their 
affection upon those they love, lest they should 
be giving to the creature what ought to be reserved 
for God. And good people have sometimes been 
so confused about the claims of God and man, 
that when a beloved child was taken away, the 
mother has tortured herself with the thought 
that the child died because it had been made an 
idol. Could there be a more atrocious slander 
on the character of our Heavenly Father, or a 
more grotesque misconception of the service of 
God? Would any earthly father bestow a gift 
upon his child, and then, when the child was 
delighted with it, tear what he had given from 
its hands, because, forsooth, the child had for the 
moment forgotten him? Do we expect our 
children to be for ever calling us by fond names, 
and to be for ever waiting upon us with assurances 
of devotion ? Are we jealous of their engrossing 
occupations, or of their innocent joy? And is 
our Father in Heaven of meaner mind and 
crueller temper, and more exacting disposition, 
than an earthly parent? God is no watchful 


296 THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 


rival, demanding the lion’s share of our heart. 
He is content if we love, for all the love we give 
to those whom we see, we are giving to God 
whom we cannot see. And every stream of 
love finds its way at last into the eternal ocean 
of His heart from which first it rose. 

This truth should also be liberty to the unbe- 
liever with an honest mind. There are many 
persons in the land to-day, and within the Church, 
who hesitate to call themselves Christians because, 
as they confess, they have not what they judge 
to be a right mind towards God. It is not that 
they deny God; it is that they do not know 
God, and that they do not love God. They can- 
not love one whom they do not know, and God 
is to them simply the intelligence in the universe 
and the principle of life. They have nothing to 
do with Him, and He has nothing to do with them, 
and, therefore, they would not call themselves 
religious. And yet this non-religious man, who 
has made no profession of faith, and counts him- 
self unworthy to approach the Sacrament, may 
be the most loyal of husbands and the most self- 
sacrificing of fathers, as well as a charitable citizen 
and a reliable friend. He did it all to his fellow- 


THE SOLIDARITY OF MAN AND GOD 297 


men, my friend says, which shows some lack of 
imagination. But God—in this matter, if you 
please, a jealous and grasping Master — claims 
every act as done to Him. He has not known 
God, so my friend says, which is a serious loss of 
comfort. But there is something more important 
and decisive—God has known him, God is loving 
him, and in a day to come God is going to reward ~ 
him. 


XXV 
DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 


“He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing pre- 
cious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, 
bringing his sheaves with him.’”’—Ps. cxxvi. 6. 

HILE the world lasts nature will be the 
parable of grace, and the progress of 
the seasons will illustrate the history of the King- 
dom of God. It may be assumed that God has 
a kingdom in this world, and that although it 
appears in different forms it can always be recog- 
nized; for it means the increase of knowledge, 
the spread of charity, the deliverance of the 
oppressed, the rescue of the fallen, the preaching 
of Christ’s Evangel. We believe that God is 
calling us daily to cast ourselves into His work 
and to be fellow labourers together with Him 
for the redemption of humanity. Whether we 
obey this impulse or not we know that it is a 
breath of God’s Spirit and a tide of the divine 
love. 
There is nothing so beneficent in human life 


298 


DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 299 


as the cause of God, and no man would consciously 
take the other side. He may be hindered from 
putting his hands to the good work, but he would 
not wish to oppose it; he would give much to 
be among the labourers whom the Master will 
reward when the sun sets. Our faith fails at a 
later point, the survey of results. Righteous- 
ness and peace seem to make little headway ; 
the nations come but slowly under Christ’s rule ; 
the vast machinery of religion has a disappointing 
output. Critics sitting in their armchairs and 
ridiculing every effort to improve the condition 
of mankind demand impossible results and fasten 
with greediness upon weak points. It is not easy 
to close their mouths as they sit upon the fence 
and jeer at the husbandman who is sowing his 
seeds on the cold March day. They seem to 
have the best of the argument, and it requires 
some courage to give one’s self to the husbandry 
of God’s Kingdom. The servants of God take 
what is valuable to them and might have been 
useful to many—their money, their time, their 
talents, their enthusiasm, their prayers, their 
love, and cast it away upon the most uncertain 
enterprise. Why did they not keep what they 


300 DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 


possessed and put it tosome more profitable pur- 
pose? Why did not the farmer keep the corn 
in his granary where he could hold it safe, why 
did he not sell it in the market place and come 
home with the price ? Why did he fling it into 
the earth? Because he had imagination and 
foresight, courage and ambition, because he 
chose to embark on a great venture. When he 
cast the seed into the ground some might be 
eaten by the birds, foolish people will always 
reduce the value of one’s endeavours ; some of it 
might be trodden under foot, the world is not our 
colleague in religion; some of it might rot away, 
all one’s work is not perfect. But the -kindly 
earth will give a home to what remains, and 
in the end of the day the farmer will have an 
hundred-fold of increase. It is for the chance 
of that repayment he emptied his store-house and 
parted with the costly grain; it is for the chance 
of a lasting harvest that the spiritual husband- 
man expends his labours and endures his anxiety. 

Were one restricted to three departments of 
beneficence as an illustration of hazardous and 
yet hopeful speculation he might take for the 
first Foreign Missions. Its pioneers were laughed 


DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 301 


at in society, and lectured by the Church; they 
were hindered and persecuted ; their passion for 
human souls and their splendid self-abnegation 
were neither welcome nor admired. That would 
have counted but little if they had been glad- 
dened by success in their exile, but even this was 
not given to them any more than to Jesus. The 
first missionaries in China, India, Greenland, 
Africa, died almost without a convert, having, 
as it appeared, lived and toiled in vain. But 
these men laid the piles deep down out of sight 
on which the structure of a new religious civiliza- 
tion rests. We are now beginning to rescue 
their names and to recognize what those men 
who were judged in their day fools and fanatics 
have done for philology and anthropology, for 
geography and commerce, and most of all for 
religion. How slow again has been the progress 
of education, how bitter its controversies, how 
vast its outlay, how many have been its servants. 
And yet there are times when one can see but 
little good fruit, times when one is almost 
afraid the balance has been of evil. But the spirit 
of intelligence is spreading like leaven through 
the heavy mass of the people. Its signs are in 


302 DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 


their homes, in the furniture of the rooms, and 
the paper on the walls, in the finer taste of arti- 
zans and the labour-saving improvements of 
machinery, in the wider interest in literature and 
art, in the growth of the secondary schools and 
the modern universities, in the establishment of 
free libraries and reading circles, and in the diffu- 
sion ef a certain urbanity throughout almost 
every class of the community. The pioneers of 
temperance fought an unpopular and arduous 
battle, and none of the benefactors of society have 
suffered more through defeat and disappointment. 
They have been embarrassed by unfortunate 
measures, they have been weakened by intestine 
quarrels, they have worked under a play of ridi- 
cule, they have run counter to the customs of 
society, they have grappled with a masterful 
temptation. Evidence can be produced to show 
that there is no decrease in the statistics on drink 
and no improvement in the habits of the people, 
and every person who is not a raging optimist 
will admit that drunkenness still battens on the 
vitals of England. On the other hand it is be- 
yond question that the nation as a whole is 
learning temperance and self-respect. Respect- 


DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 303 


able persons are not intoxicated at dinner as the 
same class were two generations ago. The pro- 
fessions regard intemperance as a vice, so do the 
middle class and the lower middle, so also do the 
artizans. Drunkenness, except in cases where 
it is a disease, is now confined to the lowest class 
in the commonwealth, and there it is a misfor- 
tune as much asa vice. It is the result of misery, 
the pitiable revenge which neglected and homeless 
people are taking on the State. Temperance 
reformers have made mistakes and they have 
endured much, but they have not laboured in 
vain. 

God’s servants would not be discouraged if 
they remembered that beneficence has many 
conditions of success, and one of them is time. 
There are six months between seed time and 
harvest, between the going forth and the coming 
back in that speculation. You cannot hurry 
nature, neither can you hurry humanity. If 
time be necessary for the growing of corn it is 
far more necessary in the sphere of morals and 
religion. The Kingdom of God, whether in the 
individual or in a nation, grows slowly because 
lasting work can never be lightly done. Sow an 


304 DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 


annual and in a few weeks it will be flowering; 
plant an acorn and in fifty years you may have an 
oak; a house can be erected in a month, a cathedral 
may require acentury. But when the blossom of 
many seasons has been gathered beneath its shadow 
the oak will still be standing, and when the town 
has been re-built ten times over the cathedral will 
be lifting its head to Heaven. You can change 
the face of a country in ten years, but you can- 
not create an intelligent, temperate, industrious, 
thrifty people in less than three generations. 
Work for such high ends and on such spiritual 
lines must be without haste and without rest, 
and the first workmen must be content to leave 
their unfinished building to their successors. 
Force is no remedy here, it is rather a disaster. 
You cannot-redeem humanity by the sword, you 
must change it by the spirit. Herein lies the 
difference between the kingdoms of the world 
and the Kingdom of God. Napoleon reduced 
Europe to a province of France in ten years. 
Jesus has been working in our midst for nineteen 
centuries, and is only beginning to have His way. 
You may remove by law every temptation to ~ 
drunkenness in a year, but only the slow-spread- 


DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 305 


ing spirit of self-respect and religion can create 
a temperate nation. You may compel every 
child to attend school, but it will take a century 
to inspire a nation with culture. Spiritual work 
is slow in the doing, but being done it stands. 
The Empire of Napoleon disappeared in a battle ; 
the reign of Jesus extends with every year. The 
Kingdom of God comes slowly, quietly, surely, 
cleansing and beautifying the character of indi- 
viduals, institutions, nations. “‘ No man saw the 
building of the new Jerusalem, the workmen 
crowded together, the unfinished walls and un- 
paved streets ; no man heard the clink of trowel 
and pickaxe, it descended out of Heaven from 
God.” 

But the spiritual husbandman should remem- 
ber that if the rate of progress be slow the far 
result is already discounted, and that if he specu- 
lates it is not in the sense that he may lose alto- 
gether, but that he loses in the present in order 
to gain in the future. The farmer does not work 
alone in his great yearly effort ; there is no man 
indeed who does so little for himself ; he prepares 
the seed with care, and tills the soil into which 
it is to be cast; he waits for the proper time 


LF. 20 


306 DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 


of sowing, and then with generous hand he lets 
the seed go. After that he simply waits and 
leaves the rest of the labour to his High Partner; ~ 
he alone of all workmen is in league with the un- 
failing and irresistible forces of nature. With 
faith and industry he does his little part, and then 
withdraws. Now the rain will water the man’s 
seed and the sun will shine upon it, and the earth 
will nurture it in her motherly bosom. The winds 
will dry it and they will all work together to give 
that man his harvest. He trusts in nature, and 
nature does not play him false. Why cannot the 
spiritual worker trustin God? We have done our 
best for our fellow men. Is there no other one 
in the universe interested in goodness except 
ourselves? Is there no power outside ourselves 
making for righteousness ? Is not the Throne 
of God established in faithfulness and truth and 
mercy ? Did not Christ live in this world, and 
work in this world, and pray for this world, and 
die for this world? Has He not risen from the 
dead, and is He not on the right hand of God with 
all Power and Majesty? We are too modest, 
isolated, unimaginative, faithless. The tides of 
time and the forces of history are with us, the 


DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 307 


principalities and powers in the heavenly places 
are upon our side. 

Remember in moments of depression when 
your own work and that of your generation seems 
a failure, that the Kingdom of God has a long 
past. The history of commerce records how 
men have been willing to stake all they had upon 
one transaction in the hope of huge gain; the 
history of religion records how a greater multi- 
tude have risked everything for the good of their 
fellow men and the Kingdom of God. Theirs is 
the higher spirit and the further vision ; theirs 
has been the master speculation of humanity. 
Time alone is arbiter of their wisdom, and time 
has already justified the venture of beneficence. 
Consider the Hebrew prophets who denounced 
iniquity in degenerate Jerusalem, and sustained 
the hopes of exiled Judah in Babylon. They 
died without seeing their protests effectual, or 
their prophecies fulfilled ; twenty-five centuries 
afterwards their words have passed into the moral 
capital of the world. Consider the apostles of 
Jesus, that handful of Jews whom He charged 
with His spirit and who filled the Roman world 
with the sound of His Evangel. For their reward 


308 DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 


they had a few converts and the death on the 
Cross; but they became the authors of a new 
civilization, and they sit on thrones judging the 
twelve tribes of Israel. Consider the noble army 
of martyrs, from those who awoke the dead 
nobility of Rome to those who won our own free- 
dom ; how utter was their apparent defeat, how 
incalculable their real influence. Consider the 
honourable roll of men and women who have 
toiled in the cause of charity, purity, knowledge, 
freedom, science, and peace, amid insults, poverty, 
and endless opposition. They died, having only 
seen the day of promise afar off, and now we 
cherish their names in everlasting remembrance. 
Did they not all sow in tears, have they not all 
reaped their harvest ? Above all let us consider 
Him to whom all the prophets pointed, whom 
all the apostles preached, for whom all the 
martyrs died, whose words were despised in His 
own day and whose honour was taken away, 
whose life was cast as a seed into the ground 
and was lost. Was ever such a wealth of good- 
ness flung away, was ever such a failure seen ? 
And now being raised upon the Cross He has 
drawn the ends of the earth to His feet, and every 


DIVINE SERVICE A SPECULATION 309 


day He sees of the travail of His soul and is satis- 
fied. With the bitterest tears ever shed our 
Lord went forth sowing His Precious Seed ; with 
the very joy of God He has come again, and for 
ever and for ever He will come, bringing His | 
sheaves with Him. 


XXVI 
THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 


«When the brethren heard of us they came to 
meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The three 
taverns, whom when Paul saw he thanked God 
and took courage.—A cfs xxviii. 15. 

T was only an incident in travel; as St. 
Paul journeyed from the seaport where he 
landed to Rome, where he was to be tried, certain 
brethren of the Roman Church came to meet 
him. It was only a courtesy in life; as he was 
Christ’s apostle they desired-to bid him Godspeed. 
But this gracious act is placed on record by the 
first historian of the Christian Church, because ~ 
it is a beautiful illustration of the Christian 
spirit and because it was a reinforcement at a 
critical moment of Christ’s servant. And on 
this incident I should like to make three remarks. 
First it reminds us that even stalwart men 
sometimes lose heart. One is ashamed to confess 
it, but he is secretly relieved to know that this 
strong St. Paul with his buoyant courage and 
310 


THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 311 


high hopes, his forgetfulness of himself, and his 
devotion to the cause of his Master, did not always 
walk on the heights where the sun is shining and 
the soul is chanting songs of victory. He also 
was sometimes concerned about the unknown 
future and took a desponding view of his work, 
and felt weary of the struggle and was tempted 
to think that he had failed. If it comes as a 
surprise upon us weaker folk it is not depressing. 
We are rather inclined to say, “‘ You, St. Paul, 
who have put councils to confusion, and faced 
angry mobs without losing nerve, who have 
endured the most arduous journeys and passed 
through the most extreme perils, who have 
sung hymns in dungeons and by your high heart 
have saved a ship’s company from death, who 
have dared all things, and hoped all things, 
whose voice has been as the sound of trumpets 
and who have been a hiding place from the wind 
to your timid converts, you also have your dark 
days and a sinking heart. St. Paul, we humbler 
men are glad to know ’’—not glad, we must put it 
otherwise. ‘‘ We are comforted to know ’’—even 
that is not the nght word, there seems a touch 
of meanness in satisfaction. What we really feel 


312. THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 


is something more tender and more becoming. 
«St. Paul, we have never come nearer thee, great 
heart, and never loved thee more than at Appii 
Forum. Thou art far and forever above us as a 
thinker and a writer, as an apostle and a martyr, 
andasasaint. But thou art a man of like passions 
with ourselves, who also hast passed through 
thy Gethsemane, and hast been afraid of the 
Father’s cup.” 

Various causes contributed to St. Paul’s de- 
pression on this occasion, and operate upon 
us all. One was his age, for he was now 
about sixty years old, and he had lived 
hardly. Twenty years ago he entered on his 
mission work, and the days had been packed 
full of labour, anxiety, persecution and suffering. 
According to some men’s travail this man had 
lived a hundred years, and toil without ceasing 
is bound to tell. It is apt to take its revenge, not 
merely in weariness of the body, but also in sickness 
of the soul. One cannot retain past middle life 
and after years of strenuous service the high 
spirits and resilient spring of youth. Besides, 
like many another faithful servant of man and 
God St. Paul struggled all his life with a body 


THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 313 


of humiliation, and robust people can not imagine 
the weight of this burden. No doubt a delicate 
body has its own compensation in freeing the 
mind from the bondage of the flesh, and refining 
it to receive spiritual ideas, in quickening a man to 
make the most of his time, and enriching him 
with the sense of the unseen world. But the 
invalid must be prepared for frequent failures of 
strength and even for- occasional collapses of 
courage. You could not have met in a day’s 
journey a frailer man than Christ’s Apostle, who 
had recently landed from that terrible voyage and 
was now making a journey of one hundred and 
fifty miles on foot. When a man is tired and worn 
out he is not himself, and cannot be judged by 
his accustomed standard : his nerves are on edge 
and he loses the mastery of himself. Hope begins 
to wither within his heart and through the dimness 
of his eyes he sees a darkened world. 
Circumstances also were against St. Paul that 
day, and no man can be indifferent to his environ- 
ment. St. Paul was inflamed and devoured by 
ambition ; there never lived any one so ambitious 
for his Master Christ, and his brethren of man- 
kind. It was not enough for the Apostle of the 


314. THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 


Gentiles that he had planted the Cross in Antioch 
and Ephesus, Athens and Philippi, although that 
would have been a sufficient and final achievement 
for other men. The Cross was the symbol of 
Christ’s victorious redemption, and it must be set 
on the highest place of the world, on the seven 
hills of Rome and above the throne of the Czsars. 
For years he had longed to see Rome, and his 
desire was now being fulfilled. But not ashe had 
imagined. The Apostle was not going to the 
Capital as a triumphant missionary, or even as a 
free Roman citizen; he was going as a prisoner 
accused of sedition, he was going in bonds and 
disgrace. For his own dignity, or for his own com- 
fort, he did not care, but he was continually con- 
cerned for the honour of Christ and the success of 
the Gospel. One aged prisoner was a’sorry am- 
bassador for Christianity in Rome, and a feeble 
auxiliary for the Church. Nothing crushes a 
man more swiftly than the sense of the greatness 
of his work, and of his own weakness. When he 
allows himself to brood on this subject he wishes 
that he had never attempted so weighty an enter- 
prise ; when he thinks of the stronger men who 
might undertake it he asks himself whether he 


— 


THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 315 


ought not to lay down his charge. St. Paul 
did not make his moan in public, for he was one 
of those gallant souls who, like Browning’s young 
soldier, hide their wounds and meet the world 
witha smile. But he was a discouraged man, and 
St. Paulin a low mood was a spiritual calamity to 
the Christian Church and to the Roman world. 

From this incident we also discover that there 
were wise men in the Church of Rome—persons 
with insight and imagination, with understanding 
and affection. News had come to the little com- 
munity meeting in some upper room that the 
Apostle of the Gentiles, of whose work they had 
learned so much, and who had written to them 
so powerful a letter was coming in person to visit 
them. True he was coming in bonds, but his bonds 
were a seal of his commission and a recommend- 
ation to their love. Some evening when they had 
met to celebrate the Sacrament it was announced 
that he had landed in Italy, and was on that 
high road to Rome by which so many travellers 
came and went. Then some Roman Christian 
had a gracious inspiration. He rose, and, to 
put things in our speech, he proposed a resolution, 
and this is how it ran, and I wish to God all motions 


316 THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 


in the meetings of the Church were as heartening 
and as fruitful—‘“‘ Inasmuch as Paul, the servant 
of Jesus Christ, and an apostle by the Will of God, 
is coming to Rome in bonds for the cause of the 
Gospel; inasmuch as for many years he has 
laboured and endured for the sake of the Church 
and bears about in his body the marks of the 
Lord Jesus ; inasmuch as he sent us a letter build- 
ing us up in faith and good works and has been 
himself a comforter of many ; it is hereby resolved 
that the Church at Rome shall send him a message 
assuring the said Paul that we are prouder of him 
in his bonds than if he had come in a chariot, and 
inasmuch asit may cheer him more that the mes- 
sage be delivered in person rather than inscribed- 
on parchment, that a deputation of this Church 
go down to meet him on the way and greet him 
in the name of the Lord.” Which being seconded 
by everybody was passed unanimously and carried 
into effect without delay. We are not surprised 
at this felicitous idea, for we know from the six- 
teenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans the 
graciousness and friendliness of the Roman Chris- 
tians. One would have been glad to know who 
was its author, and to have the names of the 


THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT — 317 


deputies, but like many other men who have built 
greater than they knew they remain simply “ the 
brethren.” They were brethren worthy of St. 
Paul’s salutations in his letters, and worthy of the 
Master’s name they bore. 

For they understood one of the chief oppor- 
tunities of life and used it splendidly—the oppor- 
tunity of encouragement of which we could 
make so much but of which often we make so 
little. When a clerk in our office is looking weary 
wemight ask what ails him and refresh him with 
a few days’ rest. We might say to a servant 
who has been years with us that she has done well, 
and that her work has made a happier household. 
Occasionally we might assure a friend of our good 
will and of our high hopes about him in the battle 
of life. It were not amiss sometimes to let a 
minister know that his work has not been alto- 
gether in vain, or at least that you believe that 
he has done as well as he could. Perhaps a wife 
might be the better of a word of gratitude from 
her husband, and even the husband in his strength 
might be made stronger by his wife’s praise. We 
are quick to criticise, and criticism has its own 
place in life ; we are slow to cheer, and therein we 


318 THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 


waste one of the resources of power given to us by 
God, and we lower the temperature of life. Be- 
lieve me, men and women round us are hunger- 
ing and thirsting for a friendly word, and a kindly 
greeting, and I care not whether they be high or 
low, they would count it a benediction. When 
one is so mighty that he is independent of kind- 
ness he ought to be removed to another world, 
for this one is not big enough to hold him. Be 
not afraid that any person is ever spoiled by 
friendliness, but there are thousands who despair 
because no one has spoken. It is a question 
whether all our searching criticism has ever done 
so much to produce efficient work and to bring 


our neighbour to his best, as words of genuine — 


and hearty encouragement. 

Finally this incident proves that Christianity 
is richer to-day for that word of good cheer. 
After a toilsome journey of more than a hundred 
miles St. Paul came with his guard to Appii 
Forum and looked wistfully round upon the 
crowd of canal boatmen, traders, labourers, and 
soldiers. Each man was busy with his own 
affairs, none knew him nor cared for his Lord. 
Some glanced at the prisoner in pity, some des- 


THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT — 319 


pised him as a Jew, then every one went about his 
business. There was no known face to smile at 
him, no one to take his chained hand in a friendly 
grasp. He wasalone, and there is no loneliness like 
that of a friendless man among a crowd of people. 
Was he forgotten of his Lord? Ijudge it was the 
lowest moment of St. Paul’s life, even worse than 
when he cried out to be delivered from the thorn 
in the flesh. Oh! shame if this man be forsaken 
who is himself so true. Oh ! cruel if this man have 
no sympathy who has cheered the whole Chris- 
tian Church. Suddenly the Apostle hears his 
name mentioned with accents of respect and love 
(and there is a vast difference between the way 
in which the world and your friend pronounces 
the same name). A little company is standing 
beside him. They are plain men and some of them 
have had their past, but they are carrying them- 
selves well now, and they bear upon their faces 
the new likeness of Christ. ‘‘ The brethren in 
Rome salute thee, Paul, in the name of the Lord 
Jesus, and they thank God for thy coming.” So 
the spokesman began, and he conveyed the mes- 
sage of the Church; then he stepped aside and 
one by one the good men, his companions, greeted 


= 


€ 


: 
320 THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 


St. Paul and returned to him that day what he 
had done for them in the Gospel. Thirty-three 
miles they have trudged, poor men and hard 
working, to do the Apostle this kindness and to 
strengthen hishands. I seem to hear them speak, 
and I venture, from that catalogue in Rome, upon 
their names. ‘“‘ Beloved in the Lord,” said 
Amplias; “Our helper in Christ Jesus,” was 
Urbane’s word ; “‘ The household of Aristobulas 
salute thee, Paul;” “the household of Narcissus 
send their greeting, Paul;” “ Priscilla,” this is 
Aquila speaking, “bids me salute thee, and the 
Church which is in our house ;” “TI also,” cries 
Hermas, “and I, Herodion your own kinsman, 
Paul.” After this fashion would they speak one by 
one ; then the brethren kissed him and grouped 
themselves round him in honour and love. — 

It is not said that they brought any gift, 
although they may have made some slight pro- 
vision for his journey. They had no order for his 
release, and they had no authority even to loose 
his chains. But they did all that was needful 
when they tramped that road with their word of 
welcome. As they delivered their souls I see the 
light come back to the Apostle’s eyes, and the 


Ba en, 


THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 321 


quick warm blood rushing to his cheeks. I see 
him straighten himself and then break down, not 
now with threatened despair, but under the over- 
whelming burden of gratitude and joy. There 
was not living in the world that day aman who 
could appreciate more keenly this ministry of 
kindness. It lifted his soul from the depths to 
the height, it changed the whole face of the world 
and the future of his work. What mattered 
now to the Apostle the load of his sixty years or 
the tiresomeness of his labours, or the journeys 
by land and sea, or the prison and the scourging ? 
What mattered the chain or the soldiers, the 
Emperor, or death itself ? Nothing mattered after 
the salutation of the Roman brethren! What the 
soldiers saw was a handful of humble men, with- 
out riches and without power, what St. Paul saw 
was an embassy from a greater than the Emperor 
to bid him be of good cheer. If he was called to 
trying service, his Lord had remembered him, if 
he had to go up to Rome witha guard of soldiers 
he would also go with the body guard of Christ. 
After all, he was not going to make an un- 
worthy entrance into Rome nor was the Cross of 
Christ to be put to shame. This was the answer 


LF. 2iI 


322 THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 


to his fears, and the consolation for his depression. 
And St. Paul thanked God and took courage. 
Those worthy Romans could not know what a 
beautiful and beneficent work they had wrought. 
We know! If the Apostle came into Rome more 
like a conqueror than a prisoner and preached the 
Kingdom of God there to Jew and Gentile as it is 
written “ with all confidence ;”’ if he wrote letters 
like the joyful Epistle to the Philippians which have 
encouraged all ages of the Church, and if he bore 
himself with so high a heart in the barracks of the 
Imperial Guard that certain of Caesar’s household 
were converted to the faith, we owe it in no slight 
measure to the act of those nameless Christians. 
What they could not do themselves they did by 
St. Paul, and perhaps our chief successes in this 
world shall be wrought by men whom we have 
encouraged. If a minister preaches with special 
power one day it was because of the grateful letter 
sent him by an unknown person. If a citizen 
achieves some good work for the commonwealth 
the credit shall be divided between him and the 
people who stoodroundhim. Yes, and if a man 
does his duty bravely, year in and year out, and 
acquits himself well in the stewardship of life it is 


THE DUTY OF ENCOURAGEMENT 323 


because of the woman who thought of him and 
believed in him, and never loved him more or 
came nearer to him than in the hour when he 
was beaten. Life is heavy with burdens and sore 
with afflictions, but none of us need despair nor 
give up the struggle if there be one true heart to 
stand by us and say “‘ Well done!”” For Christ Him- 
self is in the shadow behind our friend, and the 
word of good cheer has come from the heart of 
God. 


XXVII 
THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 


“The powers of the world to come.”—Heb. vi. 5. 


B* this impressive phrase “the world to 

come” we are not to understand a world 
which does not exist, but one which has not yet 
been revealed. It has come, but we have not 
come to it; it encompasses us but we have not 
yet entered into it. Cumulative evidence from 
various quarters, scientific, philosophical and 
religious, prove that besides the world of the 
senses there is another world of the spirit. It 
is the place where a man has stored both his lost 
treasures and his unattained ideals, where poetry 
and religion have their home, from which voices 
speak to us, and into which we send our prayers. 
As the sea takes its colour from the sky, so this 
present life is affected by the life to come. Ifa 
man believes in the unseen world he will think 
one way; if he does not, he will think another 
way. The men to whom this letter was written 


324 


THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 325 


had seen the destruction of Jerusalem, and the 
break up of the old order; they had gone forth 
believers in the heavenly city, and the high 
priest within the veil. Their faith was rooted 
in the spiritual world, and their lives were inspired 
by its power. And one may well inquire what 
influence a firm belief in that world is calculated 
to have on our character, our life, our work, and 
our hope. 

First of all the world to come delivers us from 
the tyranny of the world which is. There are 
times, say when we are young and romantic, and 
there are moods, say of spiritual joy or of physical 
affliction, when we are lifted above the seen, and 
“bid it defiance. As a rule, and especially as 
youth passes into middle age, we are apt to be 
mastered by visible things. We have an exagger- 
ated reverence for rank, an insidious confidence 
in the value of money, a childish satisfaction in 
tangible honour, and an unceasing longing for an 
easy life. We may criticise the successful chil- 
dren of this world ; do we not really envy them ? 
We may speak contemptuously of its distinctions ; 
is it not a cheap cynicism? We begin to feel it 
useless to struggle after impossible ends and are in 


26 THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 


clined to conform to convention. This means both 
that the world which is has enslaved us, and also 
that the world which is to come has not touched 


us. If it had we should not have been dazzled | 


by the glamour of the senses, and we should not 
have been shut up in this prison of time. Con- 
sider that Man who has most convincingly proved 
the existence of another world, and most radiantly 
illustrated its life. What was the attitude of 
Jesus to the world which passeth away? Not 
fierce conflict as of one round whose soul it was 
casting its tangling veil, nor cynical contempt 
as of one who had drunk its cup to the dregs. 
He was neither allured nor overwhelmed by 
this show because He had seen greater things. 
What did it matter that he missed its rewards; He 
had bread to eat of which it did not know. Or 
that Pharisees insulted Him; the angels were 
waiting upon Him. Or that men forsook Him; 
He was in constant communion with His Father. 

Take His loyal follower and preacher St. Paul. 
Every man, it is said, has his price, but did any one 
believe in that day that there was any lure which 
could win the Apostle from Christ ? One knows 
that St. Paul was impervious both to the seduc- 


THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 327 


tion and assaults of the present because he lived 
under the influence of the future. What made 
him a free man, and gave him that liberty of 
indifference to the lower motives and the lower 
rewards, was not the depreciation of this world 
but the appreciation of the other. Nero had 
his own crown, and the heritage of Caesar was not 
to be despised, but St. Paul’s eye was fixed on 
the crown of righteousness which fadeth not 
away. Flesh and blood did not desire to be cast 
out of synagogues, and immured in prisons, but 
St. Paul saw over against the present loss an 
exceeding weight of glory. The prisoner who 
wrote the epistle to the Philippians and was ever 
thinking of the things which are true and lovely 
was not likely to be dazzled or browbeaten by 
the surrounding paganism. 

Again, the other world should strengthen us 
against the tedium of our present lot. For a 
minority of people life may be gay, amusing, 
and varied; for the majority it is afflicted with 
an intolerable sameness. They walk through the 
same streets and to the same office, go through 
the same routine and spend their evenings in the 
same way every day. It is dreariness which 


328 THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 


drives many men to dissipation; they desire 
a garish variety in their experiences. And the 


same weariness tempts others to suicide. Years 


ago there appeared a sombre and powerful study 
of life in a French provincial town. It described 
the despair of a young man who had a good 
position and ample means, but who had only a 
few conventional duties, and no particular 
tastes. He grew tired of the same people, and 
tired of repeating the same round, and at last 
he grew tired of life; and so he bade it good-bye. 
It is not of necessity unmanly discontentment 
which frets the victims of monotony, it is the cry 
of the soul which is greater than its environment 
What we need in such circumstances is expansion ; 
we must add another province. Inland nations 
have an unquenchable ambition for a seaboard ; 
by an instinct they push their way towards the 
ocean. With only one port they would be in 
touch with the outer world; through that single 
avenue the commerce of distant lands could come. 
Their life would cease to be provincial, it would 
become imperial. When a commonplace life is 
touched with otherworldliness its poverty is 
redeemed and its limitations are broken. There 


THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 329 


is nothing ordinary in it now, neither the cleaning 
of a kitchen nor the keeping of accounts, nor the 
making of a table, nor the writing of a letter. 
Every act is part of divine service, and is accom- 
plishing the will of God, and this little life has 
now its outlook and its opportunity. Ifa young 
man’s room be bookless, then one knows it is a 
place where he eats and drinks, smokes and 
sleeps. It is a contracting prison, twelve feet by 
twelve. But this other room where Shakespeare, 
and Carlyle, Browning and Scott, are standing on 
the shelf together cannot be measured with a 
tape, neither can its dweller’s life be confined 
within three score years and ten. Every book 
is a window into the unseen. The walls of this 
room disappear, its roof is lifted and the man is 
an heir of eternity. One brave thought within 
the soul sets us free, one noble hope fills life with 
colour. There is not in literature a more pathetic 
figure than Faber’s ‘Country Labourer.” 

He walked with painful stoop 

As if life made him droop 

And care had fastened fetters round his feet ; 

He saw no bright blue sky 


Except what met his eye, 
Reflected from the rainpools in the street. 


330 THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 


And yet he was not the poor bond slave which 
appeared, for 


Always his downcast eye 

Was laughing silently, 

As if he found some jubilee in thinking ; 

For his one thought was God, 

In that one thought he abode - 

For ever in that thought more deeply sinking. 

Should not also otherworldliness bring com- 

pensation for the hardships of this world? One 
is disappointed that social politics have not been 
widening the hearts of the people, and kindling 


within them a loftier ambition. The ideal state 


seems to be bounded by the market place, and — 


the higher end to exhaust itself in the creation of a 
bread and butter paradise. It is urged that the 
preaching of the world to come has prevented men 
making the most of the world which is. Chris- 
tianity is accused of so dazzling men’s eyes with 
the glory of the heavenly city that they are care- 
less how their brethren are living in the earthly 
city. Perhaps the preachers of the past were apt 
to forget that life is one in this world and that 
which is to come, and that the Kingdom of God 
must be established here though its glory may be 
seen hereafter. If that be so the pendulum has 


THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 331 


swung to the other extreme, for the teaching of 
public men has grown secular and the outlook of 
the pulpit is too much bounded by time. To-day 
people say ‘‘ What does it matter about the world 
to come? Let us see that we have comfort in the 
world which is. But the question arises, Can we 
satisfy men without the unseen world? Suppose 
one has perfect health and the full capacity of 
enjoyment ; that he has been endowed with large 
resources and lives in an agreeable surrounding, 
that he has won a woman’s love and is blessed by a 
well-doing family—that in short he has every gift 
of this present life. What about his soul if there be 
no other world ? Hasit not instincts which reach 
into the unseen? Does the man not long to see 
what is over the crest of the hill ? Has he not 
demands which can only be answered by the 
Eternal? But that man has really been treated 
with exceptional favour, and is not representative 
of his brethren. There are other cases with a 
different fortune, and one wants to know what 
is to be done for them if you rule out the world to 
come. What are you going to do for the martyrs 
of incurable diseases, for the poor who can never 
be entirely relieved, for widows whose husbands 


332 THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 


have been taken in the midst of their days, for the 
victims of loveless marriage, for lonely girls 
fighting the hard battle of life, for people with 
secret troubles which they may not tell, for the 
men who have made a disaster of their career ? 
The immense suffering of this present life demands 
consolation somewhere ; the glaring injustice of the 
present cries out for compensation in the future. 
People who have had no chance here must have 
a chance hereafter, and those who have had no 
joy here must have their share of joy hereafter. 
If a man be satisfied with the present world let 
him remain outside God’s Paradise, 

. - « Let such men rest, 

Content with what they judge the best. 

. .. Take thy world! Expend 

Eternity upon its shows, 

Flung thee as freely as one rose 

Out of a summer’s opulence, 


Over the Eden barrier whence 
Thou art excluded. Knock in vain! 


But do not take the hope of the world to come from 
broken hearts, from the toiling sempstress, from 
the weary labourers, from the tempted saint, from 
the seeker after God. Let its power still come to 
those who toil and suffer, the reinforcement of 


'THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 333 


a great hope and the sure promise of an abundant 
consolation. 

Once more, does not the other world exercise 
its power over us through the departed ? Have not 
those whom we love and have lost awhile a more 
pervasive influence than when they were with 
us? Never does one fully appreciate a mother’s 
unselfish care till she is gone, or comprehend a 
father’s wisdom till we look at him from a dis- 
tance. Jesus Himself was not known till he left 
this world, and He is still growing in the admira- 
tion of the race. Through those who were once 
members of our homes, and are now in the Father’s 
House, the unseen comes near and touches us. 
The lands are strange to us where we know none 
of their inhabitants ; distant places grow familiar 
where our friends are living. If a mother has a 
son in a foreign country she is so far a skilled and 
accurate geographer. She has gone to school and 
love has been her teacher, and so she knows the 
contour of the coast, the names of the cities, the 
lines of the rivers, and the character of the 
climate. She has sent out her heart to take 
possession of this unseen place and she often 
fancies that she is living there. When one has 


334 THE POWER OF OTHERWORLDLINESS 


left our home and entered within the veil, Heaven 
ceases to be strange; when most of our friends 
have passed over, then this world becomes strange. 
We enter into the experience and the longing of 
St. John, when all whom he knew and loved in the 
days of Galilee, and with whom he worked and 
suffered in the Gospel, had entered in through 
the gates. He also wished to go to rejoin his 
mother Salome, his brother St. James, the Blessed 
Virgin whom he had counted as his mother, and 
his fellow apostles, but most of all his friend and 
Lord. “Even so,” he prayed, “come quickly, 
Lord Jesus.” Otherworldliness is not unfaithful- 
ness to this world, for only he whose soul is 
inspired by heavenly motives can do his duty on 
earth. It is not cowardice to recall to our con- 
science the hour when we shall stand on the 
threshold of another world, for by its standard 
we must be judged. Nor is it false sentiment to 
Sustain our hearts amid this present toil with the 
hope of the rest which remaineth for the people 
of God. It is the homing instinct of the soul. 


XXVIII 
THINGS WHICH REMAIN 


“‘ And this word yet once more, signifieth the re- 
moving of those things that are shaken as of things 
that are made, that those things which cannot be 
shaken may remain.’’—Heb. xii. 27. 

HERE is no situation in the affairs of the 
Church which has not already arisen 

and no crisis in the experience of the soul through 
which some believer did not pass long ago. No 
disaster to religion and no revival ; no affliction 
of the individual and no deliverance but have 
their parallel in the sacred record. And this 
fact is charged with comfort for the present 
generation. Our day is one of peculiar trials for 
the Church because faith itself seems to be 
cast into the melting pot and no one is sure what 
may come forth. Doctrines which had been 
placed on a level of certainty with the axioms of 
Euclid have been flatly denied ; customs of the 
spiritual life which had grown into command- 


ments have been condemned, modes of worship 
335 


336 THINGS WHICH REMAIN 


around which affection had clung like the kindly 
ivy on a building have been swept away. So 
many things have been criticised, and so many 
have been abolished, that quiet people are gravely 
alarmed and inquire whether anything is going 
to be left. Possibiy the new house may be 
larger and handsomer, but one does not relish the 
middle passage when the old building is being 
torn down with noise and dust. Without doubt 
many things are being removed because they have 
been shaken ; are there any things which never 
shall be removed because they cannot be shaken ? 

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
answers this reasonable question by laying down 
two principles of development in the life of faith. 
And the first is the principle of change. Change 
is not a calamity but a condition of progress. 
There are things which ought to be removed 
because they are not perfect. They are temporary, 
not eternal; they are useful, but provisional ; 
they are preparatory, but not final. They are 
the scaffolding and not the building, and although 
the scaffolding must be put up first and the build- 
ing cannot be erected without it, the day comes 
when the scaffolding has to be taken down and 


THINGS WHICH REMAIN 337 


then the building is revealed. The stalk and the 
ear are needful for the kernel, but in the harvest 
time the stalk will be cut and the ear threshed 
and the corn, separated from the chaff, will be 
stored in the granary. Change is simply another 
word for growth, and if this principle were to 
cease, then life both in the Church and State would 
dwindle and decay. Without change history 
need not be written, for there would be nothing 
worth recording, and religion would end because 
it had been petrified. 

We ought not to make too much of our trial or 
to suppose that a strange thing has befallen us. 
Hereditary piety and intellectual courage were 
never more keenly tested than when a pious Jew 
who had accepted Jesus as the Messiah of God 
was invited to part with Judaism, and to commit 
himself to the new rites of Christianity. It was 
a hallowed world of religious usage into which a 
Jew had been born, and when by the preaching of 
Christ’s apostles, and the action of Christ’s spirit 
in his mind, this world so dear and familiar had 
been taken down, for the moment he seemed to be 
homeless. No doubt the shell had been broken 
that the newborn creature might pass into liberty, 


IF. . 22 


338 THINGS WHICH REMAIN 


but the transformation was an immense surprise. 
Before any one complains of the shock of new 
ideas let him imagine the perplexity of a Christian 
Jew. For him the Temple of Jerusalem, the 
system of sacrifices, the order of the Aaronic 
priesthood, the religious feasts of the year and the 
social customs of his people, as well as their divine 
supremacy and their national seclusion had been 
abolished. From his heritage of the past nothing 
was left except commandments and prophecies ; 
for even God Himself, the God of Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob, although still the living God, 
had shown a new face to his soul and revealed 
another purpose of action in the world. 

It was a cruel wrench for him to part with 
Judaism, but our author argues with persuasive 
force that Judaism was only one form of faith, 
and that its day was over. Its sacrifices had 
impressed the loathesomeness of sin upon a semi- 
barbarous people, but it was high time that the 
sacrifices of blood should cease, and should be 
replaced by Jesus’ sacrifice of obedience. Regu- 
lations which preserved the purity of Jewish blood 
and manners served a good end so long as the 
Jewish people were the guardians of the divine 


THINGS WHICH REMAIN 339 


revelation, and were being prepared to be the 
missionaries of the world. But when the fullness 
of time had come and that revelation had to be 
given to all nations,those offensive barriers mustbe 
abolished. Hebrew ethics have been the founda- 
tion of the best morality, but when they sank into 
the pedantry of the Scribes and Pharisees, kindly 
death was at hand. Judaism was worn out, 
not because it was not of God, and had not done 
its part, but because it had done its part and 
because God did not need it any more ; not because 
it had no meaning, but because its meaning was 
Christ. The change from Judaism to Christianity 
was a fulfilment. 

One must also sympathize with the pious 
Catholic of the sixteenth century who passed 
from the Roman into the Protestant world. It 
is surely a crude and unbelieving idea to hold that 
the centuries of the papal power were only evil 
and had no part in the divine plan. Did not the 
Pope succeed to the throne of the Caesars, and 
constitute a centre of authority when society was 
breaking into pieces? Did not Rome conserve 
the civilization of the race when humanity seemed 
doomed to destruction? Did not Rome build 


a 


340 THINGS WHICH REMAIN 


up the intellectual creed of the Christian Church 
and elaborate her theology? Was she not the 
protector of women and children, the judge 
between kings and the sanctuary of the oppressed ? 
As Judaism had been a servant to bring men to 
the school of Christ so the Roman Church was a 
tutor teaching the elements of Christianity, lay- 
ing down rules rather than giving principles, and 
using pictures which are not needed when men 
come to their majority. And in more recent times 
Rome has succeeded with aboriginal people, as 
for instance the Indians of the Pacific coast as 
well as on the Canadian border. But the most 
loyal Romanist must have seen in that century 
what St. Paul detected in Judaism of the first 
century, that the system had grown corrupt, that 
the doctrines were fossilized, that the confessional 
had ceased to be an aid to morals, that worship 
had sunk into a tawdry symbolism. Parental 
control suitable for the age of childhood had 4 
become a tyranny for manhood. The Reformers 
may have done their work with too slight an 
historical sense, and too little regard for those to 
whom religion itself passed away with the page- 
antry of the mass, the cult of the Virgin and the 


THINGS WHICH REMAIN 341 


kindly offices of Mother Church, who cherished her 
children from their birth to their death, but was 
fain to keep them tied always to her apron strings. 
But the full time had come for the Church to 
advance into knowledge and freedom, and the 
departure in the sixteenth century has told unto 
this day for truth and righteousness. 

Among the chief causes of the Reformation in 
the sixteenth century was the new learning. 
Erasmus and his fellow scholars in New Testament 
literature created the spirit which Luther and 
Calvin utilized, and if we be in the throes of 
another Reformation, then the original cause is 
again the revival of knowledge. It was the 
prophets culminating in John Baptist who pre- 
pared the way for Christ’s first coming and 
scholars who prepared the way for that second 
coming, and now men of letters and men of 
science have been the forerunners of a third 
departure. As soon as the spirit of literary 
criticism awoke in the early part of last century 
when the war drum had ceased to beat, it was 
certain that sooner or later the new light which 
had played round the pagan classics would fall 
on Holy Scripture. For more than half a century 


342 THINGS WHICH REMAIN 


criticism has been doing its best not to r 
but to re-edit the Bible, not to reduce b 
reset it. Physical science came in the secon 
of last century to its kingdom and it was i 
able that discoveries regarding the ways of 
in creation should be related to the creeds 
Christianity, not for the destruction of truth, 
for its clarifying. With the growth of the dei 
cracy still another element of change came | 
being, and it was only a question of time when 
Sermon on the Mount with its pervasive soc 
principles would demand a place in the cre 
It was inevitable that the action of such force 
literary, scientific and social—should tell upon 
form of Christianity. We have learned that 
authority of Holy Scripture lies not in the le 
but in the spirit, and that the comfort which 
Book contains for the soul is in no way bound 
with questions of date and authorship but floy 
from God Himself. What forms certain doctrin 
about the origin of man and about his future r 
take during the course of this century no one | 
tell, nor can any one prophesy what may 
application of Christ’s teaching to the arrang 
of society. It is inevitable that creeds whi 


a sl 
mel 


THINGS WHICH REMAIN 343 


represented the mind of the past should grow old, 
and that new ideas should demand their just 
place. We cannot but be concerned when the old 
Passes ; we cannot but welcome the new with a 
certain apprehension. Our regret is a tribute to 
the good which the former fashions ministered ; 
our apprehension is the wholesome diffidence 
with which we go out upon an untrodden track. 
But the facts of revelation stare us in the face and 
we recognize the sweep of the law of progress. 
Things are being removed because they have been 
shaken. 

The acceptance of the principle of change pre- 
pares us to appreciate the principle of perman- 
ence, Certain things remain because they cannot 
be shaken. Amid all the variations of the 
animal world the type is preserved; through 
his long ascent from the beginning of human ~ 
history man is still man; the nation may pass 
through many kinds. of government but the 
national existence isuntouched. And the Kingdom 
of God in the days of the patriarchs and the kings, 
as also in the days of Jesus and His apostles, 
is still one, and, as the writer assured those anxious 
Jewish Christians, would be more vast and splen- 


344 THINGS WHICH REMAIN 


did when it burst its provincial bonds and as a 
spiritual state extended to the ends of the world. 
For Christianity stands not in any temporary 
form of thought or rite of worship, but in God our 
Father and in Jesus Christ His Son. Whose mind 
has informed the processes of nature? Whose 
hand has guided the history of the race ? Whose 
love has been revealed to the individual in a 
thousand mercies and deliverances? No man 
can examine his life with insight and believe that 
he has been merely the plaything of forces, a 
straw on the resistless current, an orphan on the 
high road of time. God has been behind all those 
shifting scenes, half hiding, half revealing Himself, 
near unto them that call upon Him in sincerity, 
never putting to confusion any that trust in Him. 
This has been the discovery of the saints, this has 
been the comfort of the meek and lowly—God 
remaineth. 

As the centuries advance He came out from 
the shadow, and the veil passed from His face till 
our Father in Heaven was clearly revealed in Jesus 
Christ. In Christ is gathered the life of the 
kingdom and the sum of religion ; He is the author 
and finisher of faith. Unto Him the saintslooked — 


THINGS WHICH REMAIN 345 


forward, and in the expectation of Him they died. 
It was Christ all the rites of the Old Testament 
dimly shadowed, and in Him they were fulfilled. 
Unto Him the prophets pointed and through Him 
their hopes were realized. Doctrines are but the 
faint expression of His activity, and if, like 
withered leaves, they fall to the ground, because 
they have served their season, the tree will clothe 
itself afresh in another spring. The leaves flourish 
and fade, the tree standeth and liveth. It was 
Christ who created the Bible, not the Bible who 
created Christ. It is not the New Testament 
which assures us of Him, it is He who gives power 
tothe New Testament. One disadvantage of past 
days was that the Bible and creed, and even 
traditions, were placed on a level with the Lord 
Himself; one advantage of the present day is 
that the shaking of the things which are moveable 
has thrown into relief Him who cannot be moved. 
If other subjects of faith perish from our grasp 
we cling more closely to Him who changeth not. 

Hundreds of years before Christ some Hebrew 
shepherd wrote out of the wealth of his personal ex- 
perience as he watched over his flock, “‘ The Lord is 
my shepherd.” He had pierced through the soil of 


346 THINGS WHICH REMAIN 


fleeting circumstances and outward appearances 
to the everlasting rock, to the heart and source 
of all things. The wisest man of his day never 
discovered anything so true as that; the strongest 
man possessed no fortress so impregnable as that ; 
the richest man had no treasure to be compared 
with that. He needed not to fear time nor change’ 
who composed the Twenty-third Psalm. Come 
to our own day and to our own country. Visit 
some cottage in a highland glen on a Sabbath 
morning, when within the lowly home they are 
gathered for family worship. The old shepherd who 
for many a year has been guarding his master’s | 
sheep through the winter’s storms, more danger- 
ous to them and him than the wild beasts are to 
the flocks of the East, is giving out a psalm, and 
this is what he reads with reverent affectionate 
accents. 
The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want, 
He makes me down to lie 


In pastures green; He leadeth me 
The quiet waters by. 


Two shepherds separated by time and that 
wider gulf which divides the East from the West 
which, they say,can never be closed. They are 


THINGS WHICH REMAIN 347 


men of different blood, different education, differ- 
ent history, different circumstances. Yet they 
have one experience, one faith, one consolation, 
because they have one God. There are only 
two points of agreement between the men; they 
belong to the same race and they have proved 
the loving-kindness of the same God. Three 
thousand years between, as well as land and sea, 
but there is no change in the faithfulness or the 
compassion of God, “‘ Who is the same yesterday, 
to-day, and for ever.” 


XXIX 
THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 


“For the things which are seen are temporal, but 
the things which are not seen are eternal.’’—2 Cor. 
iv. 18. 


O man was ever more religious than St. 
Paul, none was more conscious that 
religion must be an enigma to the world. Worldly 
people could appreciate the Apostle’s sufferings, 
they could not imagine his hope. They saw the 
vessel driving on the rock, not the passage into 
the landlocked harbour; the runner in his mid 
course, not his goal; the scale on earth filled with 
affliction, not the other in Heaven weighed down 
with glory. They saw the Cross, but not the 
Christ, and therefore they counted the Christian 
career madness, as any effect must be a mystery 
apart from its cause. Whatever is within the 
province of sight the world understands, what- 
ever belongs to faith is outside its range. It 
was therefore the habit of the Apostle to rein- 


348 > 


THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 349 


force faith by magnificent references to the unseen, 
and it was because he saw the things which are at 
God’s right hand, that St. Paul achieved his life’s 
victory. 

We begin life with an illusion that there is | 
nothing but the seen, and we are vastly impressed 
by this physical panorama which passes before 
us from our earliest days. We do not under- 
stand that it is only the symbolical veil of another 
world. The prizes which awaken our ambition 
are those which eye hath seen, the goods which 
we value most are those which our hands can 
hold, and the applause which cheers us is that 
which our ears can hear. First that which is 
natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual, 
and it is only after we have grown accustomed 
to our physical home that we begin to ask ques- 
tions about what is beyond. When we are 
wearied with our toys, or when some of them 
have been broken, we make like restless children. 
for the window, and see in the larger life the 
reality of those things with whose petty images we 
have been playing in our little room. As time 
goes on voices from another world fall upon our 
ear, and friends pass through the veil. Changes 


350 THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 


occur which cannot be explained from this side, 
and the sense of the unseen awakes in our mind. 
We begin to believe both in the shadow and the 
substance, but it is the seen which is the sub- 
stance, the unseen which is the shadow. There 
‘is some other world, .but this is the real world. 
Our training goes on, for faith is a long education, 
and with slow steps we reach another stage. We 
are finally convinced that the seen is the shadow 
which vanisheth away, and that the unseen is 
the substance which remaineth. 
Every man must come to this belief in his own 
way, sometimes through a book or a word, some- 
times through a sorrow or a sin, but faith is con- 
firmed by a variety of evidence which is consistent 
and converging. We revel for instance in the 
exuberant abundance of summer, but where 
were roses yesterday, and where shall they be 
to-morrow? They have appeared and will dis- 
appear, but we shall live in hope of another 
summer, for the flowers are but the garments, 
often changed, of a pulse of life which is beating 
through all the years. What an impressive 
spectacle is a great city with its miles of streets, 
and its line of docks, and its vast warehouses, 


THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 351 


its crowds of people, its public institutions, its 
stored riches, its corporate life. What created 
this place? Do you answer capital? You had 
better go farther back and say brains. The 
chief force is not material, but spiritual; it is 
mind. Able men turned a village into a city, 
and if the whole fruit of their skill and enterprise 
were laid in ruins, other men like them could 
reconstruct their work. Again, cities as great 
as Liverpool are to-day a waste, and yet their 
very stones are dear to the human race, and 
their name is written in history. They have 
bequeathed a heritage which cannot die, and 
which has made human life richer. Neither 
their ships nor their palaces, neither their gold 
nor their silver have remained. What endureth 
is some book into which a writer has put his life 
blood. The traders have passed away with all 
their treasures, the prophet remains with his 
message, the lasting glory of the forgotten city. 

Or take the mystery of human affection. Two 
people love one another when the eye is bright, 
and the cheek is red. Years pass, with their 
burden of labour and their discipline of trial ; 
the hair is grey now, and the form bent; but 


352 THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 


they who loved once with the passion of youth 
are dearer than ever to one another. Love out- 
lasts youth and beauty and circumstances ; 
love will outlast death itself. We see the long 
procession of the race, the multitude no one can 
number, who were born and lived, who suffered 
and died. It seems as if everything were in a 
state of flux, and there was nothing to connect 
the past with the present. We look more closely 
into the experience of the race, and we discover 
that through all the generations one has remained, 
the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Our 
forefathers spake another tongue, and looked out 
upon a different world. But they called upon 
the same God, and put their trust in the same 
love. He is the bond of continuity between us 
and those behind us, between us and those 
before us. He is the dwelling-place of His people 
in all generations. What He was to Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob He is to us, and He will be to 
our children after us. We look back to our 
fathers, they have gone ; we look round on life, 
it is ever shifting; we turn to God whom no 
man hath seen or ever can see. He standeth 
fast. The Eternal changeth not. 


THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 353 


With most of us the conclusive evidence of 
the unseen is Jesus Christ. It was not possible 
for the Jewish race of that day by any principle 
of evolution to have produced him. He came 
from elsewhere. No one has ever lived after 
His fashion, with such becoming perfection. He 
belonged to elsewhere. Death did not bury His 
life, it remains unto this day the chief moral 
energy in the world. He went elsewhere. While 
He moved among men He condemned this world 
as when the sun puts out our rushlight; He 
suggested that other world where the hopeless 
ideals of this life are fulfilled. His biography 
breaks the bonds of sight, it lays the foundation 
for faith. His life, according to the reckoning 
of the seen, was thirty-two years, according to 
the higher reckoning it is eternal. Suppose, as 
certain drastic critics have allowed themselves 
to suggest, that He only left some half-dozen 
sayings, is there any force in the world which 
has wrought so much? Have they not changed 
the destiny of the race? Pontius Pilate and the 
rest of them, Pharisees, Jews and Romans, who 
loomed so large in that day, where are they ? 
Gone like a dream. Christ, who seemed such a 

LF. 23 


354 THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 


thing of weakness, where is He not, what has He 
not done? With his eye on the triumphant 
Christ, St. Paul faced the menacing Roman 
world undismayed; he bids us face our world 
with the same high heart, for the things which 
are seen are temporal, the things which are unseen 
are eternal. 

If the unseen be eternal, then it follows that 
character is more than life. It may be a little 
before we realize that this world is temporal, 
and behind it is God. It will be a little longer 
before we realize that in us only one thing counts, 
and that is the soul. Through all changes of 
youth and age, riches and poverty, it remains, 
and more important than everything that happens 
to us is its character. On the soul are being 
engraved certain lines, and however it may be 
washed by the ebb and flow of life, those lines 
endure, and they are the man. We say, Who is 
he ? and we are informed about his birthplace, 
his education, his business, his position. Those 
are only the outer covering of the man; if you 
desire to reach him you must do as the children 
with their nest of boxes. You must strip him 
of his name, his family, his means, his standing, 


THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 355 


his profession, his very body, which are so many 
perishable envelopes, till you come at last to 
the core of all, that which is inseparable from the 
man, and imperishable, the soul. From all 
present circumstances one may be dissociated 
any day, and certainly he will some day be torn 
by the hand of death, but no divorce is possible 
between the man and his soul. They are identical 
and eternal. Is there anything more heartening 
than a man standing alone, and unconquerable in 
_ his integrity. ‘I have nothing,” he says, “ but 
my character, and that I will not lose.”” Nothing! 
It strikes us then that he has everything. Is 
there anything more ironical than a man having 
everything that the world can give him, and a 
mean soul. Everything! it strikes us he has 
nothing. When life comes to an end with whom 
would we exchange souls, with Jesus dying penni- 
less or with the man of the big barns whose soul 
' was required of him ? 

If the unseen be eternal, it follows also that 
spiritual character should be our chief ambition. 
The duties of life are many, but none are so 
pressing as the culture of the soul, and it is not 
necessary in order to discharge it that any one 


356 THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 


should separate himself from the common life of 
mankind. This were a misunderstanding of the 
relation between the seen and the unseen, which 
is the same as that between the material and the 
spiritual in the Sacrament. It is through the 
seen we realize the unseen, and by the temporal 
we are prepared for the eternal. For any one, 
whether Catholic or Protestant, to seclude himself 
in order to educate his soul is refusing the bread 
and wine of the Sacrament in order that he may 
more surely obtain the body and blood which 
they represent. It is despising the means in 
order to obtain the end. This world is the school 
wherein we are trained for the world to come. 
It is our experience of the earthly home which 
fits us for the heavenly family; our training in 
secular business which initiates us into God’s 
high service: our daily obedience which tempers 
our nature for God’s Kingdom. The occupations 
of this life are the servants of the soul, the suffer- 
ing of this life is its discipline. The men who 
have made the most splendid progress in spiritual 
things are those who have devoted the resources 
of this world to the service of the soul. If it 
has happened that. some have had the world at 


THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 357 


their feet and allowed it to conquer them, it has 
also happened that some whom this world had 
ill-used have harnessed it to their chariot, and 
made it speed their soul more quickly to Heaven. 
When any large and lasting building is being 
erected it is surrounded, and almost hidden, by 
lofty scaffolding. Within this shelter the pile is 
rising, and when it is finished down will come the 
perishable screen. What the scaffolding is to 
the building so this life is to the soul. Circum- 
stances are the means by which the soul is shaped, 
they are the cover within which God works. 
He who confounds the passing with the eternal 
has made one of the great mistakes of life. He 
who does not avail himself of the education which 
the passing gives, has made the second mistake of 
life. 

It remains with us to choose whether we shall 
lay the emphasis on the temporal or the eternal, 
and in the last issue this is a question of sight 
versus faith. He who walks by sight will choose 
what is seen, and he who walks by faith, what is 
unseen, and the reward will be according to the 
choice. The one will receive in full measure the 
things which can be seen, but which in the using 


358 THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 


vanish away, and the man of faith shall have for 


his fortune the things which eye hath not seen, 
but which remain for ever. Years ago the 
English Academy and the French Salon con- - 


tained at the same time two pictures, which, if 
they had been painted for the purpose could 
not have been a more perfect illustration. of St. 
Paul’s great utterance. In one the king is lying 
on his bed the moment after death; he was the 
mightiest monarch of his day, and the sceptre 
has just dropped from his hands. And behold, the 
servants who an hour ago trembled at his look 
are rifling his treasury and dividing his posses- 


sions. Below with fine irony was written the — 


title, William the Conqueror—his conquests had 
ceased. In the other a man is lying in a rocky 
tomb : His conflict is over, and His enemies have 
won. He denied the world and the world crucified 
Him; Hetrusted in God and God left Him to the 
* ‘cross. But love has wrapped His body in spices, 
and given Him a new tomb amid the flowers of 
the garden; love is waiting till the day breaks 
to do Him kindness. The Angels of God and not 
the Roman soldiers are keeping guard over Him 
while He takes His rest, after life’s travail. When 


THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN 359 


the day begins to break He will rise conqueror 
over death and hell, Lord both of this poor world 
which passeth away, and of the riches of the 
world which remaineth for ever. 


APR 29 1% 


gan 2043 


JAN 12 '52 


Date Due 


RY. 


L. B. Cat. No. 1137 


[ 


Div. S. 
252.C5 W339 


31565 


ga a 


Ww 


